Follow Here To Purchase Bucket Filling from A to Z: The Key to Being Happy

Authors: Carol McCloud and Caryn Butzke
Illustrator: Glenn Zimmer
Publisher: Ferne Press
ISBN: 978-1-93832613-4

“Bucket filling is easy, as easy as can be. You can fill a bucket all the way from A to Z. Here are some ideas for things that you can do to make others happy and fill your bucket too,” Carol McCloud and Caryn Butzke write in their children’s book, Bucket Filling from A to Z: The Key to Being Happy.

At thirty-two unnumbered pages, this over-sized paperback targets children ages two to eight years old, especially those learning their ABCs or want to be considerate of others. With no scary scenes or profanity, it may be best read out loud by adults to beginner readers due to some complicated wording.

Known as the Bucket Lady, McCloud is an early childhood specialist, award-winning author, and popular speaker. Author Butzke has worked in business management for twenty years, and this is her debut book. Illustrator Zimmer has more than thirty years’ experience in publishing and started illustrating children’s books in 2010.

In this rhyming alphabet book, the writers state that everyone has an invisible bucket to collect activities that make them happy. By helping others, offering kind words, and caring, one can fill their bucket and be happy.

After several pages of suggesting filling the bucket with doing good, one page is dedicated to each of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet and include an uplifting four-line rhyme. Here are three examples:

“E is for Excited”
Excited to fill buckets, you’re a bucketfilling star.
Day and night and always, no matter where you are.

“N is for Notice”
Notice all the helpful things that other people do.
Tell them that they filled your bucket and add a big “thank you.”

“W is for Watch”
Watch out for bucket dipping. It’s a time to use your lid.
It will protect your bucket from a bucketdipping kid.

The full-color, full-page, detailed illustrations set the cheery mood with energetic expressions of children as well as adults and small buckets that are mostly overflowing with hearts of love and stars of happiness.

Although the book does not acknowledge God bringing ultimate joy and contentment, this bright and fun read will encourage many young ones to reach out to others.

Thanks to Jenkins Group for furnishing this complimentary book in exchange for a review of the reader’s honest opinion.