A Bucket of Blessings- a new classic children’s book for all

There is a lot to love about A Bucket of Blessings, written by Kabir & Surishtah Sehgal.  The story is simple, relatable to children, teaches them lessons and has big words &  pictures for children.  A Bucketful of Blessings is based on a little-known Indian myth that demonstrates the power of sharing, hope and blessings.

I hope that people don’t look at the word ‘blessings’ in the title and think this is a secular book, because it’s not.  Ditto I hope that folks don’t read that it’s based on an Indian myth and avoid reading it because of that.    If people avoid reading this new classic children’s book for either of those reasons it’s their loss.

For me this book came at the perfect time because my oldest son’s class is learning about being nice.  They have a ‘bucket’ that gets filled up when they do something nice.  Likewise when they do something mean they get things taken away from their metaphorical bucket.  I offered to read A Bucket of Blessings to their class, not knowing that they were learning etiquette in this manner.

“Is this how we fill our bucket up” the teacher asked before I started to read.  Our son had mentioned the ‘bucket’ before, but now that the teachers let me in on their lesson the book really resonated with him and the class.

The main character is Monkey, who lives in the jungle where it hasn’t rained in ages.  Monkey then remembers a story that his mother told him about how peacocks can make it rain just by dancing.  This begins the quest of Monkey to find Peacock-and then find a bucket to get some water.

Once he locates the water he treks back up the mountain, but along the way he spills some water.  That water spills out to the plants, mongoose, frogs and other animals.  The water benefited the entire valley and there was enough for the peacock to dance and make it rain.

What works in A Bucket of Blessings is that the art is creative and appeals to all ages.  The lines are hard and the bright colors somewhat out of place, like it’s been cut and pasted into the page.  It’s similar to the art in an Eric Carle book except bigger and really furthers the story.  The story in A Bucket of Blessings is simple, with the art filling in or emphasizing what the written words don’t say.

I used the words new classic for A Bucket of Blessings because it has that vibe.  It’s a beautiful book that kids will want to read over and over, plus it’s short enough for parents to want to read it. Both of our kids, ages 4 and 2, like A Bucket of Blessings, your small ones will too.