The Little Bucket

Book excerpt: **2015 New York Book Festival Honorable Mention****2015 Southern California Book Festival Honorable Mention****2016 Great Southeast Book Festival Honorable Mention****2016 New England Book Festival Honorable Mention**"The Full-Fillment" series of children's books, beginning with The Little Bucket, are meant to help children have a sense of their own inner wonder and connect to their own imagination. "WOW! The universe exists in a bucket?!" As a beginning place for self-awareness, children learn to set healthy boundaries, identify their feelings (mad, sad, glad, afraid) and learn to safely express all of their feelings appropriately, and even be a good listener in the process. We also learn in the Full-Fillment series that there is a pernicious "hole" in our bucket that seeks to get other children and other people to fill us up. The painful whines and complains about what others are or aren't doing. When the hole gets a hold of us we look into other buckets, complain about them, and even try to get them to fill us up. We do this instead of looking into our own bucket. When we can make the distinction between what is happening on the inside of us with what is happening on the outside of us (over which we have no control) we can find our happiness. Teaching children to do this, at a young age, will help them practice it as they grow up. This is the "WHAT" that The Little Bucket shows children: how to locate themselves within. With practice, we can learn to identify our own "hole" and have a sudden realization that we also have the "universe" (our creativity, imagination and curiosity) at our disposal. Many adults function out of the "hole" because they have forgotten the "universe" and as a result they live from the outside in, not the inside out. As children practice living from the inside out, together with other children, they feel happier and gain self-confidence and self-control. What better goal could we have to help children develop this inner competency, to take them through the rest of their lives. The practice of this in a classroom, for instance, will help students feel mutually affirmed and supported. A robust TEACHERS GUIDE is also available to help the teacher use this book as a model and practice in the classroom.