All living things depend on Earth’s One Well. Life would be impossible without it. But the water in the Earth’s well is threatened by our growing population and increased demands. What can we do to protect it?
One Well answers this important question while telling the eye-opening story of water on Earth.
Just like What a Waste: Where Does Garbage Go?, this book should be required reading for children and adults alike. This may look like a children’s picture book, but it is so much more than that. It’s full of facts about everything you did and didn’t know about water.
We learn that even though the amount of water on Earth has been the same for billions of years, access to fresh water is hard to come by. In North America, you can just turn on a faucet, and clean water comes out. But in places like Africa and Asia, it’s not that easy. One billion people, almost 16% of Earth’s population, have to walk more than fifteen minutes to get to the nearest water supply. A bucket of water weighs about 22 pounds. Imagine having to carry a bucket or two of water from a well to your house every day.
The most important thing to learn from this book is that there is no more water now than there was 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 years ago. And there will be no more 100 years from now, when the population may be closer to 10 billion.
This book doesn’t just tell you facts about water and how much fresh water we have available. It describes how to become better aware of every splash of water we use. There are many ways to become more well aware. For example, even doing small things can help in the long run, such as turning off the water while brushing your teeth (I do this) and collecting rainwater to water the plants (my family does this too). There are many more examples of how to conserve water, and I think everyone should do at least one thing to help. Even if you live in a place with plenty of water, saving water now means having clean water in the future, and don’t we want that?
This book reminds me of The Water War by Cameron Stracher, about the near future where fresh water is more valuable than oil and gold. After reading that experts predict that by 2050, 4 billion people may be living without enough clean water, this future doesn’t seem that far off.
For young children, there is an Arthur episode about water conservation, Season 10 Episode 4, “Feeling Flush.”
This book is perfect for teachers to teach kids about water conservation, with just 28 pages.
This week’s Weird but True Fact about Water
If you rolled all the water on Earth into a ball, it would be less than a third the size of the moon.