LING & TING'S LUNAR NEW YEAR

Prolific Lin’s fifth volume in her popular early-reader series showcases Lunar New Year traditions.

Chinese American twins Ling and Ting “celebrate the new year two times.” The calendar New Year is over, and Lunar New Year is next. Ting grouses about cleaning, but Ling “likes to prepare” by washing dishes, cleaning windows, and finishing laundry while Ting sweeps. When Ting throws the accumulated dust out the front door, Ling worries: “That dust is our bad luck!” She explains, “The New Year will come through the front door…Now it will go through our bad luck! It will bring our bad luck back to us. We will not have a lucky year!” But Ting cleverly remembers that their home has two doors: “The side door has no bad luck.” And so the twins commence their plans to “make our side door look like our front door,” with double banners, lucky oranges, and lion costumes to welcome the New Year. Lin’s resplendent illustrations adorn every page, particularly bestowing the twins with vibrant personalities—not to mention quite the admirable wardrobe, from polka-dotted red aprons to distinctive red-and-gold qi pao. The twins delightfully rely on Lin’s own picture book Bringing in the New Year (2008) as a preparatory guide. Chapter title pages are sure to elicit laughter. Working together, Ling and Ting gleefully prove they’re “two times lucky.”

Readers will be charmed as this beloved pair ingeniously ring in the Lunar New Year.