Readers will be charmed as this beloved pair ingeniously ring in the 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. (artist’s note) (Early reader. 5-9)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780316578073
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for...
A gentle voice and familiar pitfalls characterize this tale of a boy navigating the risky road to responsibility.
Gavin is new to his neighborhood and Carver Elementary. He likes his new friend, Richard, and has a typically contentious relationship with his older sister, Danielle. When Gavin’s desire to impress Richard sets off a disastrous chain of events, the boy struggles to evade responsibility for his actions. “After all, it isn’t his fault that Danielle’s snow globe got broken. Sure, he shouldn’t have been in her room—but then, she shouldn’t be keeping candy in her room to tempt him. Anybody would be tempted. Anybody!” opines Gavin once he learns the punishment for his crime. While Gavin has a charming Everyboy quality, and his aversion to Aunt Myrtle’s yapping little dog rings true, little about Gavin distinguishes him from other trouble-prone protagonists. He is, regrettably, forgettable. Coretta Scott King Honor winner English (Francie, 1999) is a teacher whose storytelling usually benefits from her day job. Unfortunately, the pizzazz of classroom chaos is largely absent from this series opener.
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for subsequent volumes. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-97044-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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