“It’s magic!” was Little Brother’s gleeful reaction to Jan Ormerod’s beautifully executed Water Witcher (Little Hare, 2006); and he literally jumped up and down in excitement, when we read it together this evening.
On a parched, drought-stricken farm in the Australian outback, Dougie helps his dad collect water each day from the ominous-sounding Last Stop Well, an hour away by horse and dray from their farm. Dad tells Dougie that if his grandfather were still alive, he would be able to find water because he was a water witcher (aka diviner). Dougie is intrigued and decideds to try it out for himself, though he knows that you have to “have the gift. Only one in a thousand can do it.”
To his astonishment and delight, his divining stick does tip downwards. Despite the scepticism of his mother and sisters, he spends the rest of the day and evening digging - it’s hard work and it looks like it hasn’t worked after all. Then at bedtime he heads outside for one more look and discovers that his hole has filled with water. All thoughts of going to bed disappear in a joyful frenzy of splashing, bringing the animals to drink, watering the vegetables and filling every available vessel with water…
Jan Ormerod has produced an absolute gem of a book. The illustrations are stunning (you can see a couple of them here). Using an effective palate, restricted mainly to oranges and blues, she evokes the heat of day and the coolness of water, as well as the emotional intesity with which Dougie sets about finding it. The narrative really gets this across too, offering insight into that sense of achievement in being “one in a thousand” in your family’s eyes, whatever it is you set your heart on doing. And the story also offers a glimpse of a bigger picture - the importance and precious nature of water, which it is so easy to waste when all you have to do is turn on a tap… Moss, Green Children’s Books talks more about this aspect of the book here.
Meanwhile, I know that tomorrow Little Brother will be walking around our garden with a forked stick… and for all you sceptics out there, it really does work - as a young teenager, I once had a go at Menzies Castle, which we happened to visit while major restoration work was carried out. Perhaps the water diviner was looking for old wells, I don’t remember - but he let me have a try and WOW that feeling when the stick dipped! I’ve never forgotten it!