A Long Walk to Water

Linda Sue Park started writing children's books in the mid-90's, first retelling Korean folktales and later working on her novels. Her works include A Single Shard, Seesaw Girl, and The Kite Fighters. A Long Walkto Water is based on the true story of Salva, one of approximately 3,800 Sudanese "Lost Boys" airlifted to the United States beginning in the mid 1990s. The theme of this book is about a young boy in Sudan trying to keep himself alive.
 

Before leaving Africa, Salva's life is one of many tragedies. He was separated from his family by the war in Sudan, and was forced to travel on foot through hundreds of miles of hostile territory; he survives starvation, animal attacks, and disease. During this book he watches some horrific/ horrible sights like many people dying and even seeing one of his only family members get killed right in front of his eyes. Throughout the book he leads a group of about 150 boys to safety in Kenya.  When he gets to the camp in Kenya they have some of the healthy people transported to America so they can get a better education and have a better life. That’s when later in the book he is relocated to upstate New York. Salva gets into a good home with new/adopted parents and four other children while he lived with them for six years he resourcefully learned English. He went to college in the United States while living there for six years. Eventually he returns to his home region in southern Sudan to establish a foundation that installs water wells in remote villages in critical need of clean water. During his trip he reconnects with his father in the hospital and learns that his mother is safe back in their village but then learns that out of the his three brothers the youngest and oldest have died.  This intense/moving story of Salva's life is told side-by-side with the story of Nya, a young girl who lives today in one of the villages Salva’s foundation put in the water wells.  Every day she would walk a two day trip just to go to a pond that was the nearest body of water; the only thing was that it wasn’t the cleanest water.

In the begging the two different stories are in two different colors so it gets confusing, but after a while you get used to it. I would recommend this book to anyone because it is interesting and it has two different stories which make it not only interesting but entertaining as well. This book goes through Salva’s adventure/life, and it is entertaining to read what goes on in his life throughout the time the war is going on. 

Book Review by Daria K.