Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) face challenges in tonal perception since CI devices cannot transmit fundamental frequency (f0) effectively, though early implantation typically leads to better tonal perception. However, previous studies primarily examined children’s perception of isolated tones. As sentence intonation, such as question vs. statement, can affect how tones are realized, it is unclear to what extent children with CIs also perceive tones in different sentential contexts and whether early implantation facilitates their tonal perception. Sixty 3-7-year-old children with CIs and 60 age-matched normal-hearing (NH) children were recruited. Their perception of tones in the final position of question and statement sentences was tested using a picture-pointing task. The results showed that while the NH group was equally accurate in tonal perception in both types of sentences, the CI group’s perception accuracy of rising and dipping tones was significantly different between the two sentence types. Furthermore, early implantation was correlated with more accurate tonal perception in statements but not in questions. Therefore, children with CIs’ tonal perception ability was contingent on intonation, and the effect of early implantation on tonal perception in sentences was restricted to statement sentences.