Bucketloads of Friends: A Look & Find Book by Mia Cassany and Miguel Bustos (Picture Book Review)

I received a free physical copy of this picture book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Bucketloads of Friends: A Look and Find Book

by Mia Cassany

Illustrated by Miguel Bustos

Published by Prestel

on October 23, 2018

Length: 35 pages

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Synopsis:

Lucas is looking everywhere for a best friend: the park, the circus, by the lake, and at school. He meets a lot of people along the way. But what about a best friend? This entertaining and colorful book is full of details for kids to search and find. Every spread features line drawings that are humming with activity. From an animal hospital populated with every kind of pet to an office filled with workers too busy working to give Lucas the time of day; from a restaurant that appears to serve only sandwiches and salad to a botanic garden where the visitors are just as strange as the plants. As Lucas travels around the city, he meets a lot of people, but will he find a best friend? Young readers will turn again and again to these drawings, discovering new details each time, and sparking their own ideas about how people interact in everyday situations. Many look and find questions will increase the fun and help to spot even more details. 

My Thoughts:

Lucas woke one morning with a feeling that something was missing from his life, so he went out in search of a friend. He visited all sorts of places around town, from the beach to the park, to a cafe. He even visited a circus and the airport but no matter where he went and how many people he talked to he could not find that very special friend he was looking for.  

This look-and-find is a ton of fun! It kept us busy for hours!

The doodle-style illustrations are iconic and entertaining. They kept us on each page for so long that we had to take several sittings to get through the entire book! We just kept coming up with new things to look for and ask the other to look for on every page. 

We loved that characters introduced in earlier scenes could be found in most scenes directly after, so it became another game to search for the dog reading the paper or the girl who came from the rock concert in each new scene. It was easy making up new stories about the characters and why they were at the park or at the vet or the airport. It was also very fun to spot the odd animal-headed person. Or was it human-bodied animals?

I like that this gave my daughter pause at how different every single person is, with different features and clothing and hobbies.  While following Lucas on his search, we contemplated what makes a good friend, how to find a friend, and where to find a friend, which I think will be especially helpful when starting school. 

I was surprised at how easy it is to 'go off on your own' and create your own entertainment with this book. I especially enjoyed this because many other 'look and find' books geared towards toddlers or young readers are too simple with maybe 5-10 pictures that don't make us want to return to them. Bucketloads of Friends, on the other hand, has kept us busy for hours and will most likely be one of our favorites for a while!