A Cool Drink of Water

An Italian boy sips from a fountain in the town square. A hiker takes a refreshing drink from a mountain stream. Black-robed women in India stride gracefully through a field with brass water jugs balanced on their heads. Whether they squeeze it out of a burlap bag, haul it home from a communal tap, or get it out of their kitchen faucet, people all around the world are unified by their common need for water. Barbara Kerley brings home this point simply and eloquently in this beautiful and educational picture book that combines striking National Geographic photographs with a poetic text to show how people in various cultures use and conserve the world's most vital resource.

Children's Literature

"When the well's dry, we know the worth of water." Benjamin Franklin might have been speaking directly to us. The striking color photographs (presumably chosen from the National Geographic Society's files) vividly illustrate the coolness, sparkle, and desirability of water as it's drunk, stored, and transported around the world. Kerley has lived on Guam and in Nepal, where she experienced firsthand the difficulties in some societies of obtaining this basic need of all people. Accompanying text, set in large type, is minimal, but the pictures speak for themselves, from black-clad Indian women carrying the liquid in bright brass pots to a small boy drinking from a boat-shaped fountain in Rome. Picture credits and a short explanation of each are given at the end along with a map of the source locations. For teachers and older readers, John M. Fahey, Jr., president of the National Geographic Society, has appended an urgent appeal for the conservation of this precious and increasingly scarce resource. This attractive multicultural book will appeal to readers and browsers of various ages or could be used as an eye-catching introduction to a thematic unit on water and its vital importance to all mankind. 2002, National Geographic, Talcroft

Barbara Kerley lives in northern California. She is the author of the 2005 Sibert Honor Book Walt Whitman: Words for America, as well as The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins.