Anna Carries Water

by Olive Senior, Laura James (Illustrator)

Overview

A beautifully illustrated picture book, set in Jamaica, about a girl learning to balance water from the spring on her head.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781896580609
Publisher:	Tradewind Books
Publication date:	02/15/2014
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	23,358
Product dimensions:	11.70(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

Larisa Jasarevic is Senior Lecturer in the Global and International Studies Program at the Universityof Chicago. An anthropologist, she is interested in bodies, natures, and popular knowledge in contemporary Bosnia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Oddly Bodily Lives in the Market
1. Just Surviving: Living Well Since the Better Life
2. Insanely Generous: Making Wealth in an Economy of Debt
3. On the Edge: Worries in Common and Circumstantial Communities
4. Medical Detours: Materiality and Magicality of Quotidian Cures
5. Strava: Distant Bodies at Hand
6. What if Not For Real? Troubles with Medical Efficacy
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Gustav Peebles

"...A unique text and a brilliant intervention in two theoretical fields, as well as an important contribution to post-socialist ethnography. The author's incisive revelation is that ethnographers cannot forever segregate the economic and the bio-medical. ...A such, it is a highly important contribution to the field, and an exciting wotk from a new voice."

Editorial Reviews

"Brilliantly illustrated."

Southern Maine Library District

"Simple, yet heartwarming...A good book to introduce how children live across the world. It is also a great book to start the conversation about how children have overcome their own limitations successfully."

Reading Today Online

'The rhythmic and lyrical text and the brightly coloured and interesting illustrations will make this picture book a good choice for a read aloud."

Resource Links

"A gentle story about growing up. Anna's goal is simple, but the text doesn't trivialize her frustration at not being able to carry water the 'grown-up' way...James's stunning illustrations...capture the beauty and colour of the Jamaican landscape, as well as the warmth of Anna's family...Anna's triumph will delight young readers."

Quill & Quire

This charming tale of a tropical girl who fetches water with her older sisters and brothers beautifully captures that moment of growing up when a new, and longed-for, skill just happens. Anna is the youngest of six children who make a long trek across the fields to collect water every day. The older sisters and brothers can easily carry buckets of water on their heads without spilling a drop, but try as hard as she can, little Anna always spills it and ends up having to carry the water by hand...in a very small tin can. She wants to be big! She longs to carry a larger container of water on her head and so help out her family with water for cooking and drinking, water for washing dishes, washing faces, cleaning teeth and dirty feet before bedtime. And when she does, unexpectedly, she is applauded and praised by her delighted family. The details in text and illustration (an older sister with her nose in book even as she carries water, a leaf on top of the water to prevent it from splashing) enrich the story. Unfortunately, the reader has no real sense of locale—palm trees paired with cow fields, personal names that range from Karen to Rohan. This may have been deliberate in an attempt to make North American children aware of water access issues in other parts of the world, but young children may want to know where their new book friend Anna really lives. Reviewer: Elisabeth Greenberg

Children's Literature - Elisabeth Greenberg

05/01/2014
PreS-Gr 1—Anna, the youngest sibling in a large Jamaican family, desperately wants to keep up with her older siblings as they make the daily trek to carry water back from the spring to their home. Her brothers and sisters are all capable of carrying large containers of water on their heads, while she has only has an empty coffee can and cannot balance it on her head. Senior quietly weaves her tale, showing the Jamaica countryside, the flag, and dasheen leaves without being intrusive. In fact, no mention of Jamaica or the Caribbean is made in the lyrical text. Staccato sentences punctuate the verse, highlighting the importance of water to everyday life: "Water for cooking and drinking./Water for washing dishes./Washing faces./Cleaning teeth." As Anna struggles to overcome her jealousy and unsubstantiated fear of the cows in the field, she is finally able to develop the inner strength needed. James's vibrant paintings will capture readers' eyes as they pore over minutiae, such as a fly on the kitchen table or brilliantly colored butterflies and birds in the fields. Little details—some of the children being barefoot, dirty dishes in the sink—will enable children to realize those in other parts of the world aren't as dissimilar as they might believe.—Michele Shaw, Quail Run Elementary School, San Ramon, CA

School Library Journal

★ 2013-12-11
Anna, the youngest in a large family, desperately wants to carry her coffee can of water on her head. She doesn't yet have this skill that all her siblings have mastered. Why, Karen can even read while she carries a water container on her head, a detail noted in the exuberant paintings accompanying the simple text, ideal for reading aloud. There is another problem. Anna is afraid of the cows in Mr. Johnson's field, near the spring. One day, when she is trailing way behind the others, Anna just starts running away from her bovine enemies (very peaceful creatures, as depicted in the illustrations). Her whole family comes to find her, and they all witness a grand sight: Anna running with her full can on her head and not spilling a single drop! James, of Antiguan background, allows her bold acrylic paintings in tropical colors to sprawl across wide double-page spreads of lush Caribbean landscapes. The hummingbirds and butterflies add a bit of whimsy to Anna's cover portrait. While not mentioned in the text, the Jamaican flag is seen on the wall of a country store, and the author was born there. When water easily comes out of a faucet, young readers rarely think about the difficult chore of carrying water, but they will empathize with Anna's desire to reach an important milestone. (Picture book. 4-6)

Kirkus Reviews

For scholars working on health and medicine across any number of disciplines, subfields, and regions, this book can serve as an example of how to make use of these conceptual categories without being beholden to them. Perhaps most of all, the book provides a service by moving beyond the emphasis on ethnicity that has dominated most academic work on the Balkans since the 1990s.

Social History of Medicine

Jašarević's work provides fresh and distinct insight into the connections between medical anthropology and political economy, and thus is a necessary read and a great inspiration for all scholars looking to approach their own research from a sideways approach.

Suedosteuropa