Gordon Lew

With simple text and black-and-white artwork, Gordon Lew describes the activities and observances associated with the Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in this pamphlet-style early reader. Associated with the harvest, it is a time for giving thanks, and for gathering with family. The making of lanterns, the eating of mooncakes, and the telling of lunar folklore - the moon maiden, the woodcutter, the three-legged toad - are all described...

Published in 1971, The Moon Festival Is Here was part of the San Francisco Unified School District's Chinese Bilingual Pilot Project, which made early readers in both English and Cantonese available to schoolchildren, and was meant to familiarize them with different Chinese festivals. I discovered it over on the Internet Archive, while seeking out children's books about the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. Although I don't know that I'd particularly recommend it to today's young reader - there are far better children's books available today about this festival, from Loretta Seto's Mooncakes to Christina Matula's The Shadow in the Moon: A Tale of the Mid-Autumn Festival - it did have some appeal, especially in the cute artwork. I liked the page that showed the Golden Gate Bridge, and I appreciated the inclusion of some astronauts, in the scene in which the father is telling moon-related stories, as these both emphasize that the festival, although a part of ancient tradition, is also relevant in today's modern world, and for young American children of Chinese ancestry. Recommended primarily to readers interested in bilingual English/Chinese educational texts.… (altro)