Lunar New Year: Great Race & Animal Zodiac

Quick Things You Need To Know:

• This is a companion list to our lunar new year collection.
• We’ve plowed through a lot of these since Chinese New Year is the big yearly holiday for our family.
• I don’t consider myself a superstitious or even a spiritual person – but I’ve grown up alongside the Chinese Zodiac as a circumstance of nature.
• So when it came time to plan to have children, we actively tried to have babies on specific years. Joke was on me – I ended up battling infertility for 7 years and having the worst possible sign that conflicts with my zodiac because we are too much alike. Truth fact: I am a Dog raising an energetic Dragon and a stubborn Horse and I am SO OVERWHELMED.
• While I *know* that our animal year doesn’t determine our personalities, it’s still hard for me to divorce my impressions of people as certain animals with traits. Except for Roosters. I don’t even know wtf is going on with them but those folks are wildcards.
• So in our family, we celebrate our animal signs and elemental attributes, and just have fun with them – kind of like our Hogwarts houses. I haven’t told the dragon yet that we were predestined to butt heads.

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Quick & Messy Book List

Stories about the Jade Emperor’s Great Race

Recommended:

• The Great Race – david bouchard – OUR FAVORITE – Q liked this, mostly because it depicted the dragon as kind and willing to be last even though he could have been first. the dog and pig story touched him the most, as the pig is unable to travel quickly so the dog stays with him and is a loyal friend. not sure if this would be a great story for anyone BUT dogs and dragons, as the rest of the characters are more complex (rat is opportunistic and dishonest, ox is kind and hardworking but a little slow on the uptake, pig is ineffectual (at some things, but good at others), rooster is a ladies’ man, monkey is vain, goat is a coward, tiger is disdainful. R2 wasn’t thrilled with the depiction of his sign – the horse – which was neutral and rather uninteresting. overall though, i liked this story of the great race way better than others. one caveat is Bouchard’s habit of couching good stories inside bland one. it’s unnecessary and hard to get kids engaged – as if we should care that this random grandmother is particularly fond of oxen. At 6, I had to reassure Q that the bland framing story would end and the story was worth reading despite the intro. At 7, we just skipped the framing story and all of us enjoyed it a good deal better. At first I was actively surprised that a white dude treated a Chinese story with such accuracy and respect, but it turns out Bouchard is Métis. Which is both a nice surprise and also kind of sad. I thought I had found a decent white guy.
  Bouchard did his research (given how important it is to Indigenous authors to honor tradition stories, this makes sense) and it holds up against all of the stories I grew up with. Despite that – one white lady gives the book a negative review on Amazon for not being ‘authentic.’ It’s always white folks who are concerned with ‘authenticity’ of our stories, btw – Chinese are typically play with creative license with our legends – just look at the Monkey King franchise. And our blatant disregard for copyright. This is a cultural difference, copying and innovating is not a bad thing in Chinese culture, and we tend to value craft over who came up with the original concept (ex: If you can copy a masterpiece perfectly and improve on it, you’re just as good or even better than the original artist). ages 4+, lunar new year

Simple Board books:

• 12 Lucky Animals: A Bilingual Baby Book Vickie Lee and Joey Chou – AAPI, cute bilingual animal board book (chinese, english, mandarin pinyin). all the zodiac animals focus on positive traits. 5yo enjoyed reading a couple times, and saw himself in all of them. this was adorable, highly recommend for 5 and under
• The Animals of Chinese New Year, Jen Sookfong Lee, a Chinese Canadian author. bilingual chinese/english board book (but no pinyin) cute photos of each baby, quick sentence for each animal, although recommended with reservations: ’the horse is scared and runs away’ is not the fun message I want for my wood horse. photos of kids of a few diff races (mostly white & east asian).

Not Recommended:

• The race for the chinese zodiac – gabrielle wang – ages 4+  simple version of the great race that works for younger kids, although the illustrations are a bit dark and stagnant. i like that they incorporate the animals personalities with action rather than description. rather brief so it doesn’t have a huge story, just the river crossing, but we do see how the dragon is late because it goes to save people and animals from a drought, which we love because Q is a dragon. does include story of rat pushing cat into the water, so not a great story for rats. This works as a simpler version of bouchard’s so I wouldn’t bother reading this, I’d just wait a year and read that one. but this is fine.
• The Great Race – dawn casey – SKIP. cute but basic and not worth reading. eliminates the excitement of the race and doesn’t include the most important part of the story, which is the personality of each character. not bad, but there are way better versions out there, even simple ones.
• Ruby’s chinese new year – vickie lee – author bio suggests white mom of asian daughter, can’t verify. could be read alongside the nian monster – I love the humor of nian monster more, but this has cute enough illustrations and is fine if you can’t get your hands on a better book. westernizes the story of the great race, mixing it with little red riding hood (modern girl taking a gift to her grandmother for Chinese new year and the animals are coming along. ox is ’she/her’ and other animals are ungendered. story is a little confusing – ruby jumps into a pond to swim to grandmother’s house and destroys the picture she drew for her. but they bring the rest of the stuff they gathered along the way, like flowers (which is as anti-climactic as it sounds). storytelling is not good, but pictures are. uses animal zodiac but loses the point and doesn’t connect to the point – which is literally the order in which the animals win the race, so it doesn’t take the place of an appropriate great race story. whitewashing. AAPI illustrator (Joey Chou)
• Story of the Chinese Zodiac (Chang) – bilingual (english, chinese, no pinyin). papercut illustrations of the great race are spectacular and artistically exquisite. simpler than our favorite, Q(7) enjoys both. includes the cat & rat story (so rat comes off as a turd). They leave out Dragon’s side-expedition and basically any of the other animals personalities. Rat is really the only character whose attributes show up in the book, and those are negative. Despite the gorgeous illustrations, the story is lacking
• The Great Race (Corr) – Despite being introduced on the first page as ‘ancient China’ This just doesn’t feel Chinese at all. I don’t know what the heck this guy who is supposed to be the Jade Emperor is wearing (balls sticking out of his hat, googly-eyed yinyang symbols, peruvian tassels), why the ridiculously obtuse Jade Emperor looks West Asian, and what on earth is going on with the ginger-bread-esque pagodas. This feels weird and goofy. On top of that – there isn’t much to the story, it’s simplified to remove each animal’s personality, and just…why was this even published? British white authors taking our stories and ruining them. ugh. problematic whitewashing
• Chinese zodiac animals – sanmu tang – holy shit this book is crap. NOPE. seems better suited for pop-psychology interests of 8yo (reminds me of my obsession with wicca and auras at that age), and fails to include legends or any suggestion that this might be silly nonsense. illustrations are SO cute and I felt sad not reading this to Q because I had been looking forward to them, but this is a book no child should ever read. also sexist AF – “females born in the year of the Rat are clever and bright, and can manage both their families and lives pretty well.” – image is of a delighted, laughing rat dusting and wearing an apron. whereas the “good strategist” rats are smoking a pipe and wearing a fedora. in fact – all animals that show toughness, strength, and mental acuity are masculine-presenting, whereas mention of children and refinery are demure females. women are singing, dancing, and overwhelmingly depicted in the “docile and compassionate” sheep described as obedient and kind. some characters are not gendered (scientists, gymnasts) but most are. problematic sexist.
• Why rat comes fist – clara yen – boring

Stories about each animal

Rat / Mouse (also usually includes, Cat)

• The Little Rat and the golden seed (Li Jian) – This was fine, but underwhelming. It’s the only book I’ve found with a positive depiction of the rat, but not as engaging as Jian’s other books. Bilingual (english, Chinese characters, no pinyin)
• Cat and rat – (ed young) – Chinese zodiac race legend. Not bad writing, but not good enough to overcome terribly blurry and dark illustrations. AAPI
• mimi and shu, I’ll race you – trimmer – AAPI multiracial author. this needed scaffolding and I had a hard time telling who was who. we had to read it a few times to get the swing of it. I’m not in love with the way they just get over their poor behavior (lying, promising to give away a friend’s coveted cupcake, pushing a friend into the water, leaving a friend to fall behind in the water). also the addition of random animals who are not in the zodiac was odd. starting the book with an invitation made it a confusing read aloud. it’s also really hard to tell that mimi is a cat (thought she was a racoon or a red-purple panda until I realized she was the cat in the traditional story) at least they left the dragon leaving to save people behind. meh. wouldn’t read again but it’s nice to see an attempt at a modern version of the story. both 4.5 & 6.5 liked it for a couple reads on the lunar new year. trimmer is still not great at writing (his wheelhouse is publishing), but the illustrators he teams up with are.
• The Year of the Rat (Chin) – SKIP. All of the other zodiac animals the rat comes into contact with are assholes. Nope. The rat also appears to have a chewing compulsion that they lock him up for. which – yikes. They only let him out when his chewing turns out to be handy. nope nope nope.

Ox / Cow / Buffalo

• Little Calf (Jian) – Pending, still waiting for this to arrive.
• Year of the Ox (Chin) – Pending, still waiting for this to arrive.

Tiger

• The year of the tiger -chin – AAPI – as usual, terribly executed. Chin’s work is a manic, sloppy mess. reads like  cartoon episode of tigers afraid of people, people afraid of tigers. Nothing at all to do with the lunar new year and only tangentially related to the zodiac in terms of personality.

Rabbit

• Another book that only Oliver Chin has bothered to tackle. Keeping my hopes up that Li Jian can cover this soon.

Dragon

• The Water Dragon (Li Jian) both R2 & Q (5 & 7) loved this for multiple reads. selflessness, sacrifice, sharing. writing gets repetitive, so there’s some ad libbing required. also in simplified chinese and english (fully bilingual, but no pinyin). we discussed how it doesn’t matter how much rice and money you have – if you don’t have water, you can’t survive (but you can use water to make rice and rice to make money). see him doing good deeds for animals – although the writing is choppy and they just keep repeating the same thing. but we still love it, and it reinforces the identity of dragons as self-sacrificing (for outsiders – self-sacrifice is an important moral value in Chinese culture) and generous leaders who care for the community. We also pull this out for stories on water protectors, conservation, and environmentalism. Squee!
• Dragon new year – david bouchard – epic storyline that kept the book exciting despite the dated painterly illustrations. once we get through the intro story-within-a-story, it’s a fun read. lunar new year, nian monster (not named, just a sea dragon), strong elders (mother of eaten fisherman is courageous and strong), ages 4.5+, includes cameo with buddha, AAPI illustrator
• Dragon Dance – holub Cute. interactive flaps and it feels cheery and cute. no chinese-slit eyes, can see the whites of eyes. somewhat sturdy flaps with supervision makes it great for toddlers and early preschool (too boring for 4+) Ages: 6m-4
• Silk Peony, parade dragon – steckman – mostly about a dude trying to haggle with a woman and rejecting her dragons, until she offers a female dragon and he’s like WHAT NO WAY TOO OLD, TOO GIRLY but this old lady dragon is such a good dragon he relents. his tone throughout the book is total condescending, rude bro style. then he refuses to pay her and is all sexist and the dragon renter is like DUDE PAY UP. and she stands up to him and from then on Peony the dragon is the official dragon of china. this book needs to be re-written as the illustrations aren’t engaging (just pictures of dragons) and the writing is awful, but it would be a good story to re-do. sexism, add to capable & kickass elders collection
• Legend of the chinese dragon (sellier) – tall format made it hard to read. not bad, but short story of how warring tribes in china were united under the symbol of the dragon, bringing together the strength of everyone. which feels kind of like toeing the line on propaganda for the chinese empire, but the idea that the children led this and it was to promote peace and come together as one in unity was kind of nice.
• The year of the dragon – oliver chin – this was written better than the dog one. dragon and his friends can’t join the dragon boat festival since the dragon is too large, plus his father disapproves. then he realizes he has a lot in common with his friends (irrelevant to the plot but they keep harping on difference/similarities) so he becomes the boat. i particularly love how he’s always helping people. ages 3.5+ dragon boat festival. It’s not worth reading for us, since at this point I just detest Chin’s work and his lack of respect for child readers makes me angry.
• Not recommended, just skip these:
  • the dancing dragon – vaughan – super basic and boring. only interesting thing is that the book accordion folds out – but I don’t see a good reason WHY. it’s like they came up with the gimmick before writing the book. spread the dragon over many pages, but there’s not story and it’s boring.
  • Jin Jin The Dragon – chang – writing is awful and adverby, story is meh, but illustrations are great. AAPI makers (brother and sister), water dragon. There’s supposed to be a sequel but this was such a painful read I just can’t.
  • Chinese New Year’s dragon – rachel sing – boooooring
  • Nian, the chinese new year dragon (Loh-hagan) this was just not…amazing. Writing was clunky. pales in comparison to the nian monster by andrea wang. tried to make a strong female protagonist, but most of her wins are luck, rather than wit as in Wang’s story. the author even admits in the end-notes that she took a western spin and made the dragon evil and mushed the two concepts of the nian and a dragon together, which feels like unnecessary whitewashing no one asked for. i thought it was odd that she referenced ‘po po’s chinese new year’ in the end notes (such an underwhelming book) but oh! she’s the author of that one too. sad. and they hired a white guy to illustrate it. why?! so lazy

Snake

• Still pending books on these!
• The Snake Goddess – Li Jian – pending review.

Horse

• The Horse and the mysterious drawing (li jian) – bilingual (simplified chinese, English, no pinyin) – R2 always makes me read the boy protagonists in Jian’s stories as ‘R2’ and this worked so well, since ‘Ah Fu’ basically sounds the same. I LOVED this book – it fits in with our 2020 theme of respecting the seasons and rhythms of work. Ah Fu is a kind, gentle, and caring little boy (Jian’s stories are one of the few that depict and kind and gentle East Asian boy protagonist.) I’m just thrilled to read a story where we teach our kids to pay attention to the signals nature gives us to know when we should move forward with certain things (ex: “’It’s time to let the earth rest,’ the white horse told Ah Fu when the rivers started to freeze.”)
• Unicorn and horse (miles) good for 5 & 7. All the unicorn stories seem basically the same to me, so I got mixed up with other shitty unicorn books – but this one is solid. on how comparing ourselves to others is just going to make us miserable, rather than focusing on the stuff we can do that they can’t. was also pretty great during chinese zodiac discussion for horses – as R2 doesn’t get many great books about horses so he enjoyed this. we went on to discuss the great things he can do that other zodiac animals cant (mostly running faster), but also how smart and what a good partner he is. social emotional skills, managing, envy
• The year of the horse (chin) – had low expectations and it met them. tedious read aloud. better storytelling than his older books just still not FUN to read and it’s so obvious and boring. but at least it’s not actively problematic I guess. this is fine if you can’t find another book that celebrates horses, but I’d still prefer to keep looking.

Goat/Sheep

• The Sheep Beauty – li jian – Not pertaining to the zodiac specifically, but does address the valued qualities of a child born in the year of the Sheep. Q loved this for a few reads. I liked it but the writing was off and the translation was not great. I stuttered over the choice to translate her into sheep beauty instead of sheep girl, as if she has more value if she’s a beauty. Q particularly liked how the sheep girl tricked the monster by telling him his own tracks, echo, and reflection were another monster he’d have to fight if he wanted to eat a child from the village. supposedly a real legend based on culture in sheep horn village. Chinese values ofself-sacrifice, tricksters, cleverness, ages 4+
• The Year of the Sheep – chin – SUPER wanted to love this bcause I love chau so much, but it was a miss. AAPI makers. forgettable story. she looks for new things or ways to do things (generally is kind of a fuck up) and when they have a drought she figures out how to help because she’s an innovative thinker. but the writing is just AWFUL and Chau hard work can’t make up for Chin’s laziness.

Monkey

• Little Monkey King’s Journey (li jian) – Origin story of the monkey king. This particular story highlights the more positive qualities of The Monkey King (innovation, playfulness) and downplays his selfishness. The relationship between Monkey and his father(adopted) is so sweet, loving, and loyal.
• See more in the unpolished notes on Sun Wukong, Monkey King

Rooster / Chicken / Hen

• The magical rooster (li jian) –  it was fine. not sure how it reflection the personality of roosters. it’s not NOT roosterish, but it’s not like ‘oh yeah this story reflects the innate personality of roosters’ the way a loyal one about dogs or a supportive one about pigs would. it’s fine, and 5.5 enjoyed it, but not worth a second read.

Dog

• The bronze dog (li jian) – great for sibling solidarity, priorities. we see how the brothers pick each other over riches and wealth and a life of ease, every time. read it with both kids together and both of them thought long and hard – and still chose each other every time. so lovely and sweet, and perfect for themes of loyalty.
• Dog in Charge – Nothing to do with the zodiac, but this doggo perfectly encapsulates the dog personality. THIS 1982 DOGGO FEELS SEEN.
• The Year of the dog – oliver chin – Skip it. modern story of dog born in current times in a doghouse and the dog family belongs to a little girl, but in a reality where dragons and tigers hang out on the sidewalk. not a great story and something that needs to be redone. ages 3.5+ emotional regulation – proportionate reactions

Pig/Boar

• The Little pigs and the sweet rice cakes (li jian)  best pig book so far. it was funny and made both 5.5 & 7.5 laugh. I liked that there was a girl pig. it was a great story about honesty. the translation is awkward, as usual, calling them “sweet rice cakes” over and over and never being like “rice cakes” and it got repetitive. it was great to read this as we closed out the year of the pig, eating nian gao, and it’s the only LNY book in english that references the kitchen god.
• in the year of the boar and jackie robinson – bette bao lord – chapter book for 8+. protagonist is 8, seems best for that age. really cute story, mentions some micro-aggressions but overall just a cute story of choosing to assimilate and some metaphors for more advanced readers on combining both chinese and american identities. very few illustrations, but the ones that are there are adorable, witty, and funny. i enjoyed the book and Q could be into it, but lack of adventure and parallel to our lives on top of lack of illustrations make me hesitant to introduce at 5 – I think that would actively turn him off, and would rather wait until he’s old enough to love it.  school day, baseball, 7+ wonderful sense of time and place, validating for girls of color. takes place in 1947 before we were allowed to gain citizenship (chinese exclusion act) – it’s not mentioned in the book (probably for the author’s protection) but given the date, the author is likely a paper daughter, autobiography, third culture kids. AAPI, undocumented, validating for girls of color, third culture kids
• The year of the pig – chin – writing is better than usual (still not stellar, but not like ugggh), and manages to form a cohesive sotry without  too many distractions. everyone tells little pig (patty) to be more like them, ignoring that they have abilities she does not (she needs mud because she doesn’t have wool, she sleeps lying down because she’s not a horse, etc.) then she uses her pig-ness to help find the farmer’s jade ring in the compost. this was cute, and spoke to her using her natural abilities.  self-acceptance