The Dragon New Year

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

In a seaside village in China, a small child is awakened by New Year’s
fireworks. Terrified, she runs to her grandmother. The grandmother
explains that long ago, the New Year was a time of great fear, because
that was the time when a huge dragon emerged each year and ate anyone it
saw. One day an old woman and a mysterious stranger decided to scare the
dragon by building a huge bonfire on the beach at midnight and pounding
kitchen utensils to make as much noise as possible. When the dragon
approached, the image of a flaming fisherman rose out of the bonfire,
threw a fiery net around the dragon, and trapped it. The dragon escaped,
but ever since that night the Chinese have wardd off the New Year dragon
with lots of noise and fire.

In this second sublime collaboration between David Bouchard and
Zhong-Yang Huang (the first was The Great Race, 1997), Bouchard’s
elegant prose is a perfect complement to Huang’s magnificent artwork.
Bouchard notes in a short afterword that the grandmother’s story is
one of several ancient traditions about the origins of the Chinese New
Year. The Dragon New Year is a perfect introduction to one of the
biggest celebrations in the world. Highly recommended.