Happy New Year (lunar that is) again!

Hope you all are enjoying the Chinese New Year today. We celebrated with a take out Chinese dinner and remembered that my husband was also born in the Year of the Pig as is this New Year's animal. However, in the past we have seen this lunar year animal more often called the Year of the Boar rather then pig. We like the boar reference better as it seems a bit more of a masculine kind of rough and tumble animal than the image a simple farm pig conjures.

The newly released picture book The Year of the Pig: Tales from the Chinese Zodiac by Oliver Chin and illustrated by Jeremiah Alcorn (2007) offers the reader a humorous insight to the Chinese Zodiac and a fun little tale about Patty the pig. Check your library shelves for this amusing tale and enjoy a coming of age story and a bit of Chinese culture. I think this is the second in what looks to be a new series about the zodiac.