A Long Walk To Water

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park - based on a true story

Wow! what a powerful little book, each of its 120 pages speaks powerfully. This is truely a book that won't leave you right away - you'll think about this story, you'll think about your next glass of water, you'll remember Nya and Salva long after the story is finished. And hopefully you'll be inspired by this story or one like it, inspired to persevere during a hard time like Salva, or perhaps you'll be inspired to make a difference in someones life a world away from yours. It doesn't matter how you are inspired just as long as you know that you as one person here in this place we inhabit that you can make a difference.

A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about a girl in Sudan in 2008 and a boy in Sudan in 1985. The girl Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond everyday. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the "lost boys" of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay. Enduring every hardship from lonliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya's in an astonishing and moving way.

Here is an author interview.