Last week Grace Lin’s new picture book, Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival (Knopf, 2010) came out.
And just in time, too.
On September 22nd, people across Asia and in Chinese communities around the world will gather with their families to celebrate this harvest holiday.
Thanking the Moon is geared toward children aged 4 to 8, but all my kids enjoy it, even the baby. I love Lin’s rich illustrations: the colorful lanterns, robust mooncakes, juicy green pomelo fruit, and hot cups of tea.
I’ve been reading this book to my younger kids this week before their naps and bedtime at night. Even my 12 year old joins in at night, studying the different lanterns (shaped as rabbits, goldfish, and horses, plus the simple round ones).
I didn’t know about the Mid-Autumn Festival until I moved to Hong Kong weeks shy of my 20th birthday. So kids these days, no matter where they live, are lucky to have such fun and informative books like Thanking the Moon.
Happy Moon Festival!
How sad! Here I thought the lantern festival must have been the Spring Festival because there were no lamps in Guangzhou when we were there three years ago this week…. 🙁 I’d always hoped to see the lantern festival. Sigh. Modernity. Sassafrassafrickinfrackin….
Thanks for the tip on Grace Lin’s book! I’ve got a different one I need to remember to share with my daughter tomorrow, but I’ll see if I can’t get Lin’s for next year. :)We love her stuff.
Thanks, Vic, for your comment!! I totally know what you mean about feeling frustrated in China. When I was in China during the Mid-Autumn Festival, I didn’t see one lantern. No one really celebrated the holiday and the mooncakes tasted terrible. That was 15 years ago, but probably the year after you were in China, the country made the Mid-Autumn Festival a national holiday–for three days! Now people do more there and I assume they light lanterns, although you never know. I saw lanterns all around Hong Kong a month before the Mid-Autumn Festival. People really go all out there, though they don’t have three days off! There’s another holiday called the Lantern Festival, which is the night of the first full moon of the year, 15 days after the Chinese New Year. It’s very confusing because I never saw lanterns in China or Hong Kong after the Chinese New Year. You probably have “Round is a Mooncake”, which is great. I just love all of Grace Lin’s books. My oldest son just finished her middle grades novel, “When the Mountain Meets the Moon.” That’s another one to keep!
my favourite chinese festival – imagine being let loose with a paper lantern and box of matches 🙂 when i was a bit older a group of us went to the foothills of lion rock on a marathon watchalong one friday night – magic
That does sound magical! By the time I came to Hong Kong, there were very few paper lanterns. Most were made from cellophane, which melted quickly after you lit the candle inside. Back then in China, no one even lit lanterns 🙁