A Long Walk to Water

A Long Walk to Water

by Linda Sue Park

Genre: Juvenile Fiction

Synopsis:  Nya goes to the pond to fetch water for her family.  She walks eight hours every day.

Salva walks away from his war-torn village.  He is a "lost boy" refugee, destined to cover Africa on foot, searching for his family and safety.

Two young people...two stores.

One country: Sudan.

This mesmerizing dual narrative follows tow threads-one unfolding in 2008 and one in 1985-with one hopeful message: that even in a troubled country, determined survivors may find the future they are hoping for.

From the back of the book

Review: What an eye opening story for young readers (maybe 5th grade and up)!  This was a quick, easy, short read about 2 children from Sudan and their experiences-one in the present who has to walk quite a distance to water and one in the past who is one of the lost boys of the Sudan who lives in refugee camps after the war came to his village.  Each chapter begins with a snippet of Nya's story, the girl who has to walk a long way to water and more of the chapter is about Salva, the lost boy.  I wished that I had more story from both of them.  Maybe a chapter about Nya and then a chapter about Salva would have given more meat to the story.  I wanted to know more and I also wanted to know true facts.  Salva is a real person but some facts are fictional.  Also after a while, I wondered how the author was going to connect the 2 stories.  They were finally connected at the very last sentence of the book.  But overall this really would be a great book for young readers as an introduction to what has happened in the Sudan.

Rating: 4 stars