I’m gaga over the book I’m showcasing today: a cultural lesson, a visual feast, and a dream for kids who miss the interactive flaps of their toddler years. But before I get to that, let’s step back for a second.
Earlier this month, I was sitting next to a friend at my daughter’s basketball game. We were discussing the pressure to get our act together every January. I’m not setting any New Year’s resolutions, I told her. I’m exhausted from the holiday season at the bookstore. I’m exhausted from the holidays themselves. I’m exhausted from travel and making nice with family and eating. I don’t even want to make my bed this month, much less reinvent myself. I definitely don’t want to give up wine.
She shared something she had just read in a newsletter from wellness guru and author, Danielle LaPorte. The lead-in was this: “Hold Up! January is *NOT* the New Year…not actually. Not seasonally, not energetically, not for thousands of years according to the LUNAR NEW YEAR. So, stay in your jams and hold off on the resolutions.”
LaPorte goes on to explain that our American calendar is a mash-up of the western Georgian calendar (365 days in a year) and the eastern Lunar calendar (254 days), which is why some holiday dates are set and some fluctuate with the year. Our calendar might decree January 1 as New Year’s Day, but many of our citizens whose cultural heritage hails from Eastern Asian countries follow the lead of China and celebrate on the first new moon of every year, otherwise known as Lunar New Year. This puts those New Year’s celebrations squarely in the middle of February, with this year’s beginning on Saturday, February 10.
For those who recognize Lunar New Year as the start of the new year, January is not a time for revving up internal engines. It’s a time for rest. A time for incubation. A time for sweeping away dust and fluffing up our nests. A time for taking stock. In that light, the fact that our bodies want to cling to the blanket on the couch, that our brains want the escape of a book more than a list of “to dos” in a shiny new planner, isn’t something to feel guilty about. It’s the cosmic order of things.
(Apparently, there’s also a whole Mercury in Retrograde thing going on this year that makes it even harder to get anything of significance accomplished in January.)
As my friend introduced this idea, and as I read more about it, a tightness inside me released. We don’t have to celebrate Lunar New Year to learn from its traditions. Curiosity is almost always rewarded with new insights about human behavior and the world we share. And what I was hearing made such intuitive sense.
In recent years, there have been some fantastic children’s books released on the subject of Lunar New Year, not just for those who celebrate but for the rest of us to learn about it, too. (Michelle Sterling’s A Sweet New Year for Red and Dane Liu’s Friends Are Friends, Forever are two favorite picture books you might remember if you follow me on Instagram.) Of the numerous releases this year, there is one that ascends to the top, an extraordinarily illustrated primer on Lunar New Year, including the days leading up to it, encased in a box-like, gold-trimmed cover and boasting not 10 but more than 140 itty-bitty flaps in its pages. The Lucky Red Envelope (ages 4-8) is written and illustrated by Vikki Zhang, a renowned artist trained in traditional Chinese painting, born in China and residing today in both Shanghai and New York. And what a talent she is!
The story centers Yue, a young Chinese girl whose Lunar New Year is extra special because it’s the first time she’s sharing it with her baby brother, Ru. It begins on the eve before the festival, as the family prepares to impress the kitchen god with flowers, treats, and candles, hoping “he will tell the Jade Emperor just how much luck to bring us next year.”
In the pages that follow, we witness the family dusting and sweeping away bad luck, lighting incense offerings to ancestors, hanging golden calligraphy in the doorway, and preparing dumplings, noodles, and other dishes with significance and meaning.
We follow along as Yue and Ru attend a fireworks show, don their fanciest red clothes for good luck, and join extended family and friends for feasts. As Yeye, Yue’s grandfather, tells her, people celebrate Lunar New Year differently in different countries, but food is always one of the most important parts.
But the flaps. Oh, the flaps! The flaps are a voyeuristic dream, letting us see inside purses and books, drawers and lanterns. We get to see into the mechanisms at work in the centerpiece of the dragon parade. (“Don’t be scared, Ru, it isn’t really a dragon. If you look underneath there are nine people, all moving together to make it dance beautifully.”) In December, I had a girl in the bookshop who was around four or five years old, and she wanted to buy a lift-the-flap board book from our baby section. When her mom pointed out that she had long outgrown books like that, she lamented, “Why don’t they make flap books for bigger kids then?” (I was delighted to point her towards Lucy Brownridge and Eunyoung Seo’s Cat Family at the Museum, which we had in stock at the time and which is by the same publisher as The Lucky Red Envelope. Thank you, Quarto, for understanding that big kids like flaps, too.)
A favorite page will undoubtedly be that where Yue learns the story behind the Zodiac, and readers get to find the flap that corresponds with their year to see the animal. (Spoiler: 2024 is the year of the dragon!)
The story ends with the last day of the celebration and the Lantern Festival, a grand finale of colorful fish and rabbits sailing overhead and enjoyed alongside take-out bowls of wonton soup. But not before Yue receives money gifts in red envelopes from her family (in even denominations for luck, of course!).
From the design to the detail, every square inch of this book is mesmerizing. With all the joy and excitement and preparation that February brings to those who celebrate Lunar New Year, it’s no wonder they need January to rest up.
And maybe the rest of us can learn something from that, too. We’ve still got a week left in January. I say we take time to clear our shelves of what doesn’t serve us and wait a little bit longer to kick off our fresh start.
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Book published by Quarto Group. All opinions are my own. Links support the beautiful Old Town Books, where I am the children’s buyer (and yes, we ship!).
