My son has been fascinated by Chinese culture and history for years now. Thankfully China’s rich history gives us plenty to talk about during our homeschool days. In fact, we stepped back in time to the era of the Song Dynasty just last week through our Mystery of History lessons and found ourselves learning all about China.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.
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Since The Boy is fascinated by Chinese history, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in Multicultural Children’s Book Day and receive Tuttle Publishing‘s All About China for review. What a perfect fit at the perfect time!
All About China Book Review
I couldn’t be more happy with All About China! This book truly delivers anything and everything you could want to know about Chinese history and culture. Author Allison Branscombe and illustrator Lin Wang have done a fantastic job creating an engaging book packed with information, fun, and beautiful artwork.
All About China is so thorough that my initial plan was to work through it a little bit at a time. Since it’s so comprehensive, there’s a lot of information to digest! Regardless of my intent, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into the room and found The Boy curled up digging into it. There have been quite a few, “Hey Mom, did you know…?” moments happening too. He loves this book!
Aside from the plethora of information presented in All About China, one of my favorite things is that includes several great recipes. We’ve tried several of them over the last couple of weeks and plan to test out the rest of them in the coming weeks. I’ve even been looking through it in hopes of putting together a meal for Chinese New Year.
We tried the recipes for Kid-Friendly Long Life Noodles, Auntie Lili’s Festive Almond Jello, and the Kid-Friendly Mooncakes. All of them were good, but those mooncakes were so simple and yummy! We liked those so much that we’ve made them again since our first attempt!
We love the fact All About China includes plenty of fun elements. Folk songs, legends, games, customs, and holiday information are all included. There’s also information about the Mandarin language, dining etiquette, and Chinese arts.
The Boy especially loved the instructions for making Tangram Brain Teasers included in All About China, but he wasn’t the only one.
Since we were studying the Song Dynasty through our history curriculum while reading All About China, we had a couple of other China-related things going on in our homeschool. One of those was a simple painting of China’s flag. We used red and yellow tempera paint, but you could easily use Crayola’s China Coloring Page and color the flag instead.
The Boy didn’t exactly need an excuse to read another Magic Tree House book, but this seemed like a great time for him to read Day of the Dragon King. I love how this entire series is full of adventure, but has great information woven in to every page! (A Perfect Time for Pandas , Fact Tracker #26: Pandas and Other Endangered Species, and Fact Tracker #31: China: Land of the Emperor’s Great Wall are the other Magic Tree House books that are connected to China, but The Boy read those at an earlier time.)
Bottom Line: All About China is the perfect book to anyone looking to spark interest or learn more about the fascinating country! We’re so happy to add it to our homeschool book collection and I can already tell that it’s one that won’t stay on our bookshelf for too long. It will be referenced over and over again throughout the years!
You can (and totally should!) get your copy of All About China by heading over to Amazon through the linked image below. While you’re there, be sure to stop by and check out all of the books in Tuttle Publishing’s All About series.
Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2016
Our Mission: Created by Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom and Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book/Audrey Press, the mission of Multicultural Children’s Book Day is to spread the word and raise awareness about the importance of diversity in children’s literature. Our young readers need to see themselves within the pages of a book and experience other cultures, languages, traditions and religions within the pages of a book.
We encourage readers, parents, teachers, caregivers and librarians to follow along the fun book reviews, author visits, event details, a multicultural children’s book linkup and through the (#ReadYourWorld) hashtag on Twitter and other social media.
Special thanks goes to the twelve fabulous Multicultural Children’s Book Day Co-hosts and to the following Multicultural Children’s Book day 2016 Medallion Level Sponsors:
Platinum: Wisdom Tales Press, StoryQuest Books, Lil Libros
Gold: Author Tori Nighthawk, Candlewick Press, Bharat Babies
Silver: Lee and Low Books, Chronicle Books, Capstone Young Readers, Tuttle Publishing, NY Media Works, LLC/KidLit TV
Bronze: Pomelo Books, Author Jacqueline Woodson, Papa Lemon Books, Goosebottom Books, Author Gleeson Rebello, ShoutMouse Press, Author Mahvash Shahegh, China Institute.org, Live Oak Media
Get Connected
- Diversity Book Lists and Resources for Educators and Parents
- Multicultural Children’s Book Day on Twitter
- Multicultural Children’s Book Day on Facebook
- Multicultural Children’s Book Day on Paper.li
Ready to do more exploring? Here are some other Multicultural Children’s Book Day reviews: