Amy Wu and the Lantern Festival

August 15, 2024
An accident involving a beloved lantern has a young girl of Chinese descent hustling for a replacement for Lunar New Year. The whole house is bustling with preparations for the two-week holiday, and Amy Wu adores it all. "The food, the decorations...but most of all, Amy loves the traditions!" Tonight is the Lantern Festival. To observe the first full moon of the new year, her family takes out a special lantern belonging to her father. It may look ordinary--a red oval with gold fringe--but her father explains that it helps him remember Amy's grandmother. But disaster strikes when Amy trips coming out of the attic and smashes the lantern. Despite her father's reassurance, she and her friends take it upon themselves to fix it. They do their best but can't get it quite right. A stricken Amy laments that Lantern Night "won't be the same. It won't be extra special. It won't be tradition." Zhang's enthusiastically told narrative comes to a climax as Dad explains that "sometimes traditions change, and that's okay." Amy, her family, and her friends, who vary in skin tone, are now fully able to appreciate the evening festivities, complete with lanterns, food, and dragon dances. With dynamic shades and composition and perfectly comedic expressions, Chua's illustrations shine. Instructions on creating a lantern complete the story. A sweet holiday venture, laced with important insights into embracing change.(Picture book. 5-8)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 4, 2024

PreS-Gr 2-The lovable, effervescent Amy Wu is back for a fifth round, ready to celebrate Lunar New Year. Of all the season's beloved traditions, Amy adores the lighting of the family's lantern for Lantern Festival Day. Together, Amy and her dad fetch the apple-red lantern from the attic. It's a special heirloom from Amy's late grandmother, a backstory told in both words and illustrations. When Amy accidentally trips and smashes the lantern, she feels awful. She has ruined not just the family's lantern, but also their tradition. Can Amy figure out how to patch up not just the lantern but her sense of tradition, too? Warm, emotive illustrations bring the characters to life, and light and shadow are deftly used to spotlight characters' faces and craft alluring nighttime scenes. The spread of Amy and her dad leading the group to the festival with their patched-up lantern perfectly encapsulates the buoyant, family-oriented message of the book. Following the series' pattern, the story uses bold words for emphasis, includes a familiar spread of characters, and ends with back matter on how to make a homemade lantern. While the story is more formulaic and educational in nature than the earlier books, it gains momentum and eventually stands on its own. VERDICT This holiday story is perfect for fans of the series and for libraries looking to build their Lunar New Year collections.-Mateal Ishihara

Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.