The Hanmoji Handbook

🤔

How it works

In English, we sometimes replace a word with an emoji. Take this famous Benjamin Franklin quote for instance:

An 🍎 a day keeps the doctor away.

We all understand that 🍎 stands for apple.

Now, let's apply that to the Chinese language. Much like emojis, Chinese doesn't have an alphabet and its characters are derived from pictures of what something looks like. For instance:

木 This is the character for wood, which comes from a picture of a tree. In Hanmoji, we would write this as 🌲.

But with Chinese, there's a catch – Chinese chararacters are already made up of re-usable modules (often called radicals). Let's take our 木 🌲 example from before and put two of them side by side:

林 🌲🌲

This is the Chinese character and Hanmoji for forest.

🌱

With awards & mentions from

Regional & national organizations

The Scripps National Spelling Bee included The Hanmoji Handbook in their 2024 Great Words, Great Works books list.

The Children's Book Committee of Bank Street College of Education featured our book on their Best Children's Books of the Year 2023 list.

The Texas Library Association put us on the 2023 Texas Topaz Reading List.

Kirkus named our book as one of the Best Middle-Grade Nonfiction of 2022.

We are nominated for the Forest of Reading's 2023 Yellow Cedar Award.

We were named a FOLD Kids Book-of-the-Month for June 2022!

Our book was awarded a Kirkus Star on April 13, 2022.

Libraries, schools & shops

The Howard County Public School System put us on their Middle School Summer Reading List 2023.

A librarian at Sno-Isle Libraries included our title in Melleny's Picks for Middle School - Summer 2023.

SHOP Cooper Hewitt selected our book to accompany their Give Me a Sign 2023-2024 exhibition.

The Queens Public Library included us on their AAPI month booklist.

The Memorial High School Library highlighted our work as one of their 2022-2023 Books of the Week.

The North High School Library also put our work on their Books of the Week.

The Mid-Continent Public Library put The Hanmoji Handbook on their list of Best Juvenile Fiction or Non-fiction of 2022.

The Burnaby Public Library listed us as one of the Best of 2022 for older kids.

Canon Park Primary featured our book as part of their Non-Fiction November: Words and Language article.

We were a Parnassus Books staff pick for October 2022.

Library Services Centre (LSC) listed our book as one their Children's Notables: Spring - Summer 2022.

Now available for order

Bookshop.org 🇺🇸

Shop Local 🇨🇦

Blackwell's 🌏

💌

Sign up to our Hanmoji Puzzles newsletter

For your regular dose of emoji word puzzles inspired by The Hanmoji Handbook

📰

In the press

“The authors explain the subject matter well and present the topics in a way perfect for children over 7 up through adults with a casual interest. I would recommend this to anyone interested in Chinese and think it might be a good introductory book for classrooms where Chinese is being learned.”
Spring 2023, Young Mensan Magazine
“Learning a language can be hard work, so why not use emoji to make the process more fun? That is the idea behind The Hanmoji Handbook, a fascinating method of understanding written and spoken Chinese...”
March 1 2023, South China Morning Post
“By drawing comparisons between emoji, with which most students are very familiar, and some of the basic characters that form the Chinese hanzi (written characters) the authors dispel many of the mysteries of this logographic language… a very enjoyable and engaging read.”
January 31 2023, School Library Connection
“This is a must-read for anyone wanting to learn how to read and write Chinese or who is interested in Chinese history/trivia.”
January 20 2023, Granite Media
“...this book may hold particular appeal for people who are starting to learn the Chinese language or who are not native speakers of the language.”
January 6 2023, Canadian Review of Materials
“I would absolutely recommend this for a high school language class (not even necessarily a Chinese class-it’s an all around fun read about language).”
October 28 2022, MLS Book Review
“...if you're learning Chinese and finding it challenging or you're just interested in linguistics and you're interested in emojis and the technology of it, this is such a fascinating look and I've never seen anything like it before.”
October 4 2022, This Podcast is Overdue
“Exceptionally well organized and presented... ideal for teens and young adults with an interest in emojis, cartooning, and foreign language (Chinese) studies.”
September 2022, Midwest Book Review
⭐️ “Clever, complex, yet concise and fun: This guide promises to engage language learners and curious readers.”
April 13 2022, Kirkus Reviews
“In these uncertain times, the internet and language are more vital than ever to build bridges across cultures and borders. English and Chinese may be lingua francas for billions of people, but emoji is the universal language of this moment...”
April 17 2020, MIT News
“As a vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee and the co-founder of Emojination, an organization that wants to make emoji approval an inclusive, representative process, Lee is an example of the types of knowledgeable and creative authors that MIT Kids Press and MITeen Press hope to attract.”
April 15 2020, WBUR
Other press mentions:
- Hooked on Books with Forest of Reading Author/Illustrator Jason Li, July 2023
  Teachers on Call
- Fresh Ink for November–December 2022
  Brown Alumni Magazine
- 25 New Nonfiction Books, October 2022
  Imagination Soup
- How to learn written Chinese through emoji
  September 14 2022, TVO Today
- Exploring Emojis and Chinese with The Hanmoji Handbook
  September 1 2022, Emojipedia
- 20 Best Books To Read in August
  July 26 2022, Kirkus Reviews
- Five Books to Read This Spring/Summer
  April 11 2022, Words of Mystery
- In Focus: AAPI Authors Respond to Anti-Asian Violence
  March 18 2022, Publishers Weekly

About the authors

👦🏻

Jason Li

Jason Li is an independent designer, artist and educator. His practice revolves around promulgating bottom-up narratives, exploring networked technology and helping people live safely on the internet. His works have appeared at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Asian Art Museum, and on the BBC. He currently lives in Toronto.

byjasonli.com

🧘🏻‍♀️

An Xiao Mina

An Xiao Mina is a creative strategist, writer, and artist whose work has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, The Atlantic, and Fast Company. She's worked at the intersection of technology and culture for over a decade, at places like Meedan, Hyperallergic and Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. The author of Memes to Movements, she splits her time between New York and California.

memestomovements.com

💁🏻‍♀️

Jennifer 8. Lee

Jennifer 8. Lee is a member the Unicode emoji subcommittee and cofounder of Emojination, a grassroots group that advocates for more inclusive and representative emoji. She is also a former New York Times reporter, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, and producer of The Search for General Tso and The Emoji Story documentaries. Lee runs the Plympton literary studio, is from New York City and lives in the cloud.

jennifer8lee.com

Email the authors

The HanmojiHandbook