Story about a Chinese American girl and her favorite holiday. Encourages awareness and appreciation of Chinese American cultures.

This book covers one of the most important holidays in the Chinese culture. The main character describes everything it takes to prep for the New Year including, cleaning, food, and shopping, and decorations. Everything that they do is to bring them for good luck for the next next year. This is the year of the dragon so there are dragons everywhere. In one picture she is seen riding a dragon flying through the air, it is only a dream but it gives her a vivid image of something marvelous. On the day up to New Years The family eats, exchanges gift, and plays games. As midnight approaches they watch the firework show and celebrate the New Year.
I enjoyed that this book included Chinese words and traditions. It also gave many details and reasons for these traditions.
I would use this to teach the history of the Chinese New Years in a series and I would have a mini New Years celebration at the end of the series where we put into practice some of their traditions.

Summary: This story is about a young girl in china. She is learning all about the year of the dragon and the history behind it. She tells all about what Chinese families do to celebrate New Years. She tells about the food they eat, the things they do and the way their culture prepare for New Years. Finally she takes us through New Years and tells what she did.

Personal reflection: I like this book because it takes us into another country’s culture. I like how it has a couple Chinese words in there and tells you what they mean. It makes me realize how superstitious the Chinese culture is and how Americans do not look at New Years how the Chinese do.

Classroom Extension Ideas: We could make Chinese good wishes posters like the Chinese people do every year. We could do an activity involving the Chinese zodiac and show the kids how it differs from traditional zodiac. I could also have them draw and color a map of china and point it out on the map.

A little Chinese girl is describing how her family and cultural celebrate and bring in the New Year. She describes the task that each adult in her family does. The describes the food that is prepared and the decorations that are made and hung. Her cultural brings in the New Year with food and fireworks.

I was very interested by this book. I learned how the Chinese celebrate their New Year in comparison to my culture. I learned each cultural is somewhat different but the majority is celebrated in the same way.

I would have the children make dragon kites. I would teach the children how to write Happy New Year in Chinese.I would have the children snack on fortune cookies while they read their fortune to the class.

My mom gave this 4 stars, but I would've given it negative 5.

This book is about a Chinese family on New Year's eve and a girl who daydreamed about a dragon.

Mom's Take: This was an excellent addition to our Unit Study on China. The colorful illustrations and story truly bring Chinese culture to life. ( )