Twelve Across the River
The Great Race of the Chinese Zodiac
A picture book by Su Yiwei 苏一苇 · ages 4 to 8
Listen to the story · Print the activity pack
Rat is the smallest animal on the riverbank. He can’t swim. He can’t even see over the grass. But Rat has a plan.
Find the book on AmazonListen
Open the book and press play. Turn the page when you hear the chime.
The story in English
The full text of the English edition.
中文朗读 · The story in Mandarin
The Chinese text of the bilingual editions. 打开书，听到“叮”的一声就翻页。
The voices are synthesised.
A free activity pack to go with the book: the twelve animals to color and cut out, the finishing order to cut and paste, your birth-year animal, the animals to write in Chinese, a maze, a word search, and questions to talk about. Twelve pages for US Letter paper; they print on A4 as well.
Download the activity pack (PDF, 5 MB)Free to print for home and classroom use.
Inside the book
This is the Great Race, the best-known story of the Chinese zodiac, told as a comedy for reading aloud: why the years come in this order, why there is no Year of the Cat, and why cats have chased rats ever since. At the back, a table of the day each Chinese year began, 1984 to 2031, so that January and February birthdays come out right.
Three editions
English
English, Simplified Chinese and pinyin
English, Traditional Chinese and pinyinPaperback and Kindle. In the bilingual editions each page is shorter than in the English edition, so both languages sit beside the picture, with pinyin above every character.
About the author
Su Yiwei writes picture books that retell Chinese legends for families everywhere. The pen name Yiwei means “a single reed”, from a line in the Book of Songs, more than 2,500 years old: “Who says the River is wide? A single reed will cross it.”
To hear about the next book, open the author’s page on Amazon and press Follow.