The official Year of the Dragon started yesterday, considered to be the luckiest year in the Chinese Zodiac. That’s great news for all of us! To celebrate, we thought we’d feature a few of our favourite Chinese-themed books. Happy New Year!

Under the Hawthorn Tree
by Ai Mi, translated by Anna Holmwood
Forthcoming February 2012

A bestseller in China with more than 1 million copies sold and adapted for film by internationally acclaimed director Zhang Yimou, Under the Hawthorn Tree is a story of first love and forbidden love, set against the backdrop of the final days of the Cultural Revolution.

Money Boy
by Paul Yee

The Blue Dragon
by Robert Lepage and Marie Michaud, illustrations by Fred Jourdain

An evocative, beautifully illustrated tale of a Canadian expatriate in China from legendary theatre director and visionary Robert Lepage.

Tales from Gold Mountain
by Paul Yee, illustrated by Simon Ng

*Winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize, the IODE Violet Downey Book Award and the IODE National Chapter Award

This landmark collection of eight stories describes the extraordinary circumstances of the Chinese who came to build the railroad in Canada and the United States.

The Wild Beasts of Wuhan
by Ian Hamilton

In the third installment in the wildly popular Ava Lee series, The Wild Beasts of Wuhan, butt-kicking Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant Ava Lee uncovers the secret world of art fraud.

Chin Chang and the Dragon’s Dance
by Ian Wallace

*Winner of the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator Award

Chin Chiang has dreamed of dancing the dragon’s dance but now the first day of the Year of the Dragon has arrived, and he is so scared that he wants to melt into his shoes.