The Year of the Rabbit is quickly approaching! Celebrate the New Year with some of our favorite rabbit books. We have included recommendations for all ages.
What is Chinese New Year?
Sometimes referred to as Lunar New Year or the Spring Festival, Chinese New Year celebrates the beginning of a new year in the lunar calendar. Beginning on the first new moon of the year and ending on the first full moon, the celebration starts with a feast and fireworks display and concludes with a Lantern Festival. This year, the New Year celebration begins on January 22 and ends on February 5.
In preparation for the New Year celebrations, many families clean their houses, sweeping away bad luck and making way for good fortune. During the festival, celebrants do not clean or sweep so that they do no remove any new good luck. It is also customary to pass out red envelopes containing money during the New Year celebration. The color red is thought to ward off evil spirits and symbolize good luck.
Why is 2023 the Year of the Rabbit?
The Chinese Zodiac is made up of 12 animals, which reflect a 12 year cycle based on the lunar calendar. The rabbit is the fourth animal in the zodiac cycle and represents the fourth year in the cycle. The order of the animals is based on a legend that says the Jade Emperor decreed a race and that he would name the years based on the order in which the animals arrived to him. One version of the story says that the animals crossed a river, which proved treacherous, and the animals had to use their wits and strength to cross it. Another version says that the rabbit was poised to win the race because it was so fast, but decided that it had so great a lead that it could take a nap. When it awoke, other animals had surpassed it. Hence, it ended up fourth.
Rabbit Recommendations
To celebrate the New Year, we’ve collected some of our favorite rabbit and rabbit-adjacent books for all ages.
When the Lady is mad at Jack for destroying books, she decides to send him and Rex the dog on a one-way trip into outer space, and while she enjoys some peace and quiet, Jack and Rex get into trouble on a far-off moon, where they meet an alien named Zip.
Hattie the rabbit is a magician! Abracadabra, katakurico! Oh, goodness! Out pops a cat from Hattie’s magic hat. Can you guess what creature will appear from the magic hat next?
Eleven-year-old Ada and her friends face zombie rabbits, alien mobs, and Puppet Cartels as they explore their small New Mexico town seeking Ada's missing twin sister.
Armed with her fledgling powers, a magic cookbook, and the mentorship of a talking rabbit, sixth-grader Winnie Zeng must embrace her heritage and the powers of her ancestors to save her town from an evil spirit of Chinese legend.
To her neighbors in the Vale of Industry, Bridgebelle is an ordinary rabbit. All day long, she toils at the carrot factory. But Bridgebelle is not ordinary--she's a rabbit with talents beyond her own understanding. Using cha, the mysterious fuel that powers her world, she can change everyday objects into thokchas--magical, transforming works of art. Bridgebelle makes thokchas because they're beautiful. But there are those in her world who want to harness her powers and turn her art into a weapon.
Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, a caustic art school dropout, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the sinister yet saccharine world of the Bunny cult and starts to take part in their ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they magically conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision.
Want to learn more about Chinese New Year?
The Post Road Library is hosting a Chinese New Year Celebration on January 8, 2023 at 1:30PM. Students from the Spring Music School will be performing Chinese folk music in the Post Road Library Meeting Room, and there will be crafts and activities, including a scavenger hunt, through out the library.
Brittany and Sara
Post Road Library
No comments:
Post a Comment