Gung Hay Fat Choi!  Xin Nian Kuai Le!  Today is Chinese New Year’s.  How will you be celebrating the occasion?  Read about how Chinese Canadian poet and mother Fiona Lam views the holiday with her son in “Discovering the Soul of Chinese New Year” in the B.C. based The Tyee.  I’m sure many Asian Canadians of a certain generation can relate; I certainly do!  Hope you have a blessed time with family and friends as you welcome in the new year.

Fill your vases with peach blossoms, kumquat plants and chrysanthemums—symbolizing luck, prosperity and longevity, respectively, the three great blessings of life, according to ancient Chinese beliefs— and join us in welcoming the New Year of the Tiger!

In Chinese folklore, tigers are courageous and powerful, and tiger years are usually associated with great changes. We at PaperTigers have already gotten into the spirit. Have you?… If you need inspiration, gather the children around to make their own PaperTigers tiger to put on their bedside table or bookshelf, as both a symbol of good things to come and a reminder that, when it comes to great books, PaperTigers is always happy to point the way!

Here’s to a new year of growing and learning by leaps and bounds!

Just in time for February 14th, when we will be wishing everyone a Happy Year of the Tiger, we at PaperTigers are delighted to be launching a Tiger of our own: one that we hope will find a home in every corner of the globe. And when you have created your personalised tiger, we hope you will send us a photo for us to post here on our blog.

We have talked for a long time about having a “real” paper tiger and we are very grateful to husband-and-wife team, authors Sally and Stewart Walton for giving us permission to reproduce the tiger from their book, Make Your Own: Paper Jungle (A Golden Book, 1994). My children were given this book as a present a few years ago and have made most of the animals several times – they make great gifts for grandparents, who, of course, don’t mind how many times they receive a toucan or a chameleon!

The tiger, in pdf format, comes with complete instructions. On page 1 you’ll find a ready-painted version and on page 2 there are two plain outlines – perfect for those who want to give their imaginations free rein and for making multiple copies…

So get going – and send photos of your Tiger(s) to blog(at)papertigers(dot)org – we can’t wait to see your Paper Tigers and what a great way to see in the New Year! Gung Hei Fat Choy! Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Living in a country where Chinese New Year is a fifteen-day festival during which everyone becomes Chinese–in the same way that everyone beomes Irish on St. Patrick’s Day–means that questions about the holiday become inevitable and insistent.

Why are firecrackers an integral part of the festival? Why are markets filled with green-leafed oranges?  What are the scarlet paper wall-hangings that are emblazoned with gold calligraphy? Why are there so many packages of nuts, seeds, and dried fruit for sale? Why do people buy branches laden with flowering plum blossoms or pussywillows? What are the small red envelopes used for?  What does it mean to be in the Year of the Ox? And most important to many spectators, what is that lion doing, and who are the masked people who dance with it?

I don’t know about you, but when I want quick and clear answers to questions like these, I turn to children’s books. And the ones that provided answers for me are Tricia Morissey’s Hiss! Pop! Boom! and My Mom Is a Dragon and My Dad is a Boar, along with the inimitable Demi’s Happy, Happy Chinese New Year!–all three of which are laden with enticingly presented facts.

If you have questions about this vibrant and revitalizing festival that brightens the darkest time of year, these three books are a great place to begin your search for answers. And if you’ve found other titles that have helped with this quest, please let us know what they are!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Happy New Year!

If you’re looking for books to read, you’ll find recommendations here – but Grace Lin has left a hole in this year’s celebration – there’s no Year of the Ox! Never mind – her Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat are a joy to read at any time!

Elizabeth’s Children’s Book Blog has some great recommendations for Chinese New Year, as does the Boston Public Library, which has both a general section and country-specific books. Happy reading!

Welcome, Year of the Rat!

To help you celebrate, here are a couple of new books we can recommend…

Grace Lin has a sequel just out to her delightful Year of the Dog – called, appropriately enough, Year of the Rat. We’ll have our own review of it soon, in the meantime, you can read what Grace herself says about it here.

You can read here about another new book by Grace, this time a picture-book called Bringing in the New Year. At the end of that post, Wild Rose Reader gives some good “Lunar New Year” links too.

And here are some more Chinese New Year picture books reviewed by PaperTigers:
The Year of the Rat: Tales from the Chinese Zodiac by Oliver Chin, illustrated by Miah Alcorn,;
The Great Race / The Story of the Chinese Zodiac by Dawn Casey, illustrated by Anne Wilson;
The Day the Dragon Danced by Kay Haugaard, illustrated by Carolyn Reed Barritt.

Do you have any special favorites you’d like to share with us?

…And a PS – do have a look at Grace Lin’s blog to read about her trip to China last month – there are some great photos too.