Amy Wu and the Lantern Festival

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.