This Next New Year - Hardcover

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PreSchool-Grade 2-A Chinese-Korean boy relates how he and his friends celebrate the "lunar new year, the day of the first new moon." One child celebrates the holiday with "Thai food to go," while a non-Asian child likes to get "-red envelopes stuffed with money from her neighbor who came from Singapore." The narrator's mother cooks a special Korean soup, and his family observes the traditions of house cleaning, lighting firecrackers, and being extra good to ensure a lucky new year. Wong carefully and clearly presents the reasons behind the rituals in a manner understandable to young children. She explains in an appended note about her own confusion as a child about the timing and meaning of the holiday. Choi's vibrant, somewhat primitive paintings realistically capture the details of and preparations for this hopeful time of year. Youngsters will enjoy the bright colors and the sense of motion and activity conveyed as the boy helps his mother clean, flosses his teeth, and cringes from the noise of the firecrackers. A good choice for anyone getting ready to celebrate Chinese New Year.
Anne Connor, Los Angeles Public Library
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ages 4-8. A young boy prepares for Chinese New Year with rituals and wide hopes, in this illustrated, free verse poem. The narrator, who is half Korean, describes how he and his friends, like so many people in a multicultural society, celebrate the holiday with a modern blend of adopted and inherited traditions: the boy's mother makes traditional Korean new year soup; Evelyn, part Hopi and Mexican, loves the money-stuffed red envelopes from her Singaporean neighbor; and Glenn, part French and German, "calls it Chinese New Year, too, even though he celebrates it at his house by eating Thai food to go." At home, the boy cleans the house, "so it can soak up good luck like an empty sponge," grooms himself, and pledges to be brave and positive--"none of that can't do, don't have, why me." Choi's smooth, brightly colored paintings--filled with firecrackers, dragons, and other cultural symbols--ably illustrate the optimistic activity and the yearning in the accessible, rhythmic text. Children of diverse backgrounds will connect with the boy's earnest desire to help change the family's luck and realize his own potential. Gillian Engberg
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