Do you celebrate cultural holidays with your family? Are your parents first-generation immigrants? Are you a second-generation immigrant? I’m a 1.5-generation immigrant. Did you know that’s a thing??

Immigrant Definitions

First-generation immigrant: born outside of the U.S.
Second-generation immigrant: born in the U.S. but parents were born abroad
1.5-generation immigrant: born outside of the U.S. but immigrated as a child

A Brief Immigration Story

My parents immigrated from Taiwan to California when I was 9 months old and my brother was born in California. My paternal grandparents lived with us for ten years, and we only spoke Mandarin at home. Because of that, I’m still fluent in Mandarin and our twins’ first language is also Mandarin.

When I was a kid, we didn’t really celebrate many Chinese holidays. We did attend Chinese school on Saturdays, however, and I was in a Chinese folk-dancing class. We would also participate in the occasional culture day at school, where we brought a cultural food to share with our classmates and wore our traditional cultural clothing.

Now that I have my own family in the U.S., I feel somewhat removed from my Chinese heritage, and even more so for my children. I have visited Taiwan plenty of times throughout my life, and by April this year, our twins would have been there twice. We’ve never been there for all the festivities during Lunar New Year, however, and I would love for us to experience it with our relatives there.

Trying to keep our cultural roots while living in the U.S. has been a challenge for me, especially since we live on opposite coasts from my parents. Even though we don’t celebrate our Chinese holidays, we are thankful there are so many children’s books about them. Below are some of our favorite Lunar New Year children’s books we’ve read over the years, along with additional books recommended by friends. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

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Alphabetical List by Author’s Last Name

Ho, Richard – Two New Years
Jie, Wei and Can, Xu – Home for Chinese New Year
Kim, Aram – Tomorrow is New Year’s Day
Li-Qiong, Yu and Cheng-Liang, Zhu – A New Year’s Reunion
Liu, Dane – Friends are Friends Forever
Rattigan, Jama Kim – Dumpling Soup
Sterling, Michelle – A Sweet New Year for Ren
Yage, Wang – Playing with Lanterns

Other Books Recommended by Friends

Chen, Kelsey – Five Little Dumplings
Fang, X. – Dim Sum Palace
Fu, Cherie – Little Messy Marcy Su
Lin, Grace – A Big Mooncake for Little Star
Shang, Wendy Wan-Long – The Rice in the Pot Goes Round and Round
Yim, Natasha – Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas
Zhang, Qiusheng – Sweet Laba Congee
Zhang, Vikki – The Lucky Red Envelope
Zihan, Mei and Leng, Qin – New Year