All the Water in the World

Nonie’s understanding of water is a huge part of her way of coping with The World As It Is. What kinds of special connections do you have with the environment, if any? Do you feel a special relationship with a certain aspect of the ecosystem in which you live?

Father often tells Nonie and Bix, “Sometimes what looks like shelter is only menace.” What do you think he means by this? What are examples of things that seem safe, but are in reality very dangerous?

Nonie has invented a game called Animal in Mind. She plays this for a number of reasons—to pass time, to calm herself, to connect with other people. Do you have a game that is part of your family that might be like Animal in Mind? If you had to pick an animal to play this game with Nonie, what animal would you choose and why?

Nonie and her mother seem to be very attached to an identity that is part of a world that doesn’t exist any longer. They choose to maintain their identities as scientists, as a “studier of the bits of things that end up telling a kind of awful and beautiful truth.” Is this only a survival technique, or do you think it is an important part of rebuilding the future world?

Keller loves the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly. Father loves chimneys. Nonie loves water. Mother loves sea butterflies. All of the people in Amen are trying to save something, to carry what’s important to them into the future. What would you choose in your own life to save? What is one thing you love enough to save? What do you think you’d be best at saving?

Amen is just one utopia that people have created in The World As It Is. Many times in the book Father—and then Nonie—uses the phrase “Utopias fail.” What kinds of utopias do we see in the book? Do you think people gravitate to each kind because of who they were before, because of fate, or as a result of their own ideas of what a future of safety could be?

Nonie is saving the world not only by helping to protect the work of all the people of Amen, but also by writing her own book. There are several kinds of writers in the book, including the people at the Cloisters. Discuss the importance of writing and recording in a post apocalyptic world.

Nonie and Bix are constantly demonstrating their different responses to the complex traumas of living through the end of The World As It Was. Discuss how each of them have demonstrated their responses, both in positive ways and in negative ways.

On page 208, Nonie says of leaving the birchbark canoe behind, “At least it was finally closer to home.” In multiple places in the book, Nonie describes her understanding of the importance of returning artifacts and objects to the Indigenous people who originally owned them. Discuss the role of that return in the work of the museum before collapse and in The World As It Is. How do the people of Amen understand their responsibility to return stolen objects to their communities?

All the Water in the World is told entirely from the perspective of Nonie, who barely remembers The World As It Was. She’s relying on the stories of the people around her, the information in the museum, and even the memory of her sister to help her understand what she didn’t experience. Do you think the trip north changes the way she sees The World As It Was?

There are so many ways in which Nonie and Bix have to learn to operate on their own throughout the book. Discuss the meaning of Bix learning to navigate the water, and Nonie learning to understand strangers.

The title of the book is a reference to a phrase Nonie says on page 287, “I felt the weight of all the water in the world.” What do you think she is feeling when she feels that weight? How has her understanding of water changed over the course of the book?

If you had to choose a place to wait out the collapse of your city or town, would you choose a place like Amen? How would you select the place of safety you use as your refuge? Who would you invite in?

In the book, Angel asks the kids to consider, “Why is that so?” and “Who does it benefit?” She’s constantly asking her students to think more deeply about the origins of the crisis they are living through and the roots of the problems in the world, from racism to resource over extraction. What about the world we live in now comes to mind most when you think about these questions?

The people of Amen have to cultivate distinct survival skills and attitudes to make their way in The World As It Is. If you knew there might be a natural disaster coming to your homeplace, what kinds of skills and attitudes would you begin to cultivate? Would you acquire concrete skills? If so, which ones? Would you begin to coordinate with your neighbors? Would you set up mutual aid to be prepared? If you have navigated a disaster already, how have you done this? What would you change?

Nonie learns to fear the man in the tower as she makes her way north. How did Keller and Father understand the threats of people in The World As It Is, especially around race and other differences? How did they try to teach Nonie and Bix, or fail to do this?

Health and medicine are a huge preoccupation of the people in The World As It Is. How can you think of ways to help you and your family and neighbors to thrive in that kind of circumstance? How do we think about protecting those vulnerable people in a world with greater precarity and increased threats?

Father and Mother have created a community of “other mothers” for Nonie and Bix, and Keller and Angel have created a haven for Mano. What is the meaning of parenting in All the Water in the World?