Get Ready for The Hanmoji Handbook!
The sun is rising☀️ the moon is bright 🌙 The Hanmoji Handbook launch is in sight!
We interrupt this hiatus of Yellow Canary Land 🐤 for a special announcement about a new book from An Xiao Mina and friends.
Over the past few years, Jason Li, Jennifer 8. Lee and I have been working on The Hanmoji Handbook: Your Guide to the Chinese Language Through Emoji, an illustrated young adult book published by MITeen Press.
Here’s what the book’s about:
Learn Chinese with a new twist! This full-color illustrated handbook introduces and explains Han characters and idioms through the language of emoji.
Even though their dates of origin are millennia apart, the languages of Chinese and emoji share similarities that the average smartphone user might find surprising. These “hanmoji” parallels offer an exciting new way to learn Chinese—and a fascinating window into the evolution of Chinese Han characters. Packed with fun illustrations and engaging descriptions, The Hanmoji Handbook brings to life the ongoing dialogue between the visual elements of Chinese characters and the language of emoji. At once entertaining and educational, this unique volume holds sure appeal for readers who use emojis, anyone interested in learning Chinese, and those who love quirky, visual gift books.
Want to support the book? Here’s how:
Buy the book starting Tuesday, August 30, in Canada the US and Thursday, September 1 in the United Kingdom! If you’ve pre-ordered it online, you should be getting your copy soon, or swing by your local bookstore or library to pick one up. We hope you love it as much as we enjoyed making it.
Subscribe to Hanmoji Puzzles, your weekly dose of emoji word puzzles inspired by The Hanmoji Handbook. And don’t worry — you don’t need to speak Chinese at all in order to play along. You just need a love for emoji and be curious about how language works!
Join us online next Wednesday (August 31) at 7:30pm New York time for our launch day event on gather.town! Please get your free ticket here.
On pause as of December 2021, Yellow Canary Land 🐤 is a monthly look at the future of global media and technology. It’s ostensibly about some distant tomorrow, but really, it’s about how the forces of our yesterdays and todays are likely to shape the times to come.
Feel free to subscribe, and you’ll be notified when the newsletter starts up again. For now, we’re taking a little breather and regrouping on strategy.