Picture Books For Chinese New Year

This is part of a series on writing booklists about holidays beyond Christmas. To read more about it, you can see it here.

Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) is still a few months away, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be added to our list of holiday picture books! These books were fun to look up and discover new titles. The Chinese culture has so much to offer and learn about, so let’s dive into my top favorites!

The Runaway Wok

Ruby’s Chinese New Year

A New Year’s Reunion

Look! What Do You See?

Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas

What books are you reading for Chinese New Year? 

A Picture Book List For Diwali

This is part of a series on writing booklists about holidays beyond Christmas. To read more about it, you can see it here.

Welcome to our list of favorite Diwali books! This holiday was a favorite of mine to research because of the colors involved with Diwali, making the illustrations in every book so fun! Here are my top four:

Festival of Colors by Kabir and Surishtha Sehgal

I love how this book is simple and on a child’s level, while still incorporating the Diwali jargon and vocabulary. It is also very inclusive of multiple races, showing that Diwali can be enjoyed by many! 

Lots of LIghts: A Story About Diwali by Kavita Sahai

This one is fun because elephants are the main characters that walk kids through what Diwali is, again, on their level. 

Rani Saves Diwali by Anita Badhwar

A princess saving Diwali! Such a fun book with cute illustrations. 

Binny’s Diwali by Thrity Umrigar

Binny is trying to tell her class about her favorite holiday, Diwali. And her peers love it!


What other Diwali books do you love reading to your class? How do you observe Diwali in your classroom or school?

Merry Christmas! But What About Other Holidays? We Need More Picture Book Representation

Friends, I’ve written a lot of posts about Christmas picture books, but there are many, many people who don’t celebrate Christmas and have a different holiday they observe. And while finding book lists for Christmas is easy, it’s a little more difficult to find picture books for other holiday celebrations such as Hannauka or Diwali. So over the next few weeks, I’ll be blasting you with book list after book list for these other holidays. 

I’ll be covering
Diwali
Hanukkah
Las Posadas
Chinese New Year
Winter Solstice
Kwanzaa
Three Kings Day

Typically, I don’t like to recommend books unless I’ve held them in the flesh or even on an eReader and read every page to know if it’s something I really want to share with friends. However, our little, local library has limited access to some of these holiday books. I made a friendly suggestion to our children’s librarian that we should add some of these new titles and she agreed and promised to do what she could! 

Because of this, I have had to get creative and watch read alouds on YouTube or do research on Goodreads on some of these picture books to make sure it is something I truly want to recommend to you. 

Another great resource I have found is this free printable of different holidays with QR codes to scan that you can share with your students to learn more about each holiday. 

So happy holidays and stay tuned for lots and lots of books that will help you teach your students about multiple holidays, not just Christmas! 

Books We’ve Recently Added To Our Home Library

I recently added new books to our little home library and wanted to share some with you.

Malala’s Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai. I wrote about Malala months ago and what an impact she had on opening my eyes to new cultures. When I found a children’s book I could read to my kids, I knew I needed it!

Fly High! The Story of Bessie Coleman was also top priority on my list. My daughter is an avid Doc McStuffins watcher and in one episode they feature Bessie Colman and her accomplishments. I knew it would be fun to dive a little deeper into her history!

Who Was Jackie Robinson? A good old “who was” book! Are you catching on that we are trying to learn about people here? A chapter book is hard for my almost 3 year old to take in right now, but it has great information that I can pull from and teach her about Jackie Robinson.

The Hike was recommended to me by a dear friend. It ties in great science by labeling plants and animals subtly throughout the book, and shows great diversity, which is always important!

Addy A Heart Full Of Hope is an American Girl story about Addy, a girl growing up in Philadelphia during the Civil War. I tried reading bits and pieces of this to my almost 3 year old, but she lost interest and did not understand well enough what was going on. It’ll be a fun, quick read for me, and one that will sit patiently on our shelves until she’s ready to pick it up.

This Is How We Do It is a book so well loved by many! I hear this book recommended more by friends than most any other book. I have been wanting to buy it for quite some time, so once I decided to expand our library this week, I knew this one was on the list! We are currently on back order for it and anxiously awaiting it’s arrival!

Young, Gifted, and Black: Meet 52 Black Heroes From Past and Present was recommended to us again by a good friend. This one has by FAR been our favorite! The illustrations are ravishing and the information is incredible. This book again featured Bessie Colman, already a hero of my daughter’s, and Michelle Obama, who too was featured on Doc McStuffins. Simone Biles, Stevie Wonder, Rosa Parks, and Zadie Smith are just a few of the others you get to meet along the way.

I love the history, science, and diversity each of these books bring to our little library.

“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”

Harry S. Truman