Youth Book Review: A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park
By Corinne Deschamps
This book is based on a true story. It is about a war that was declared in Sudan, in which a little boy called Salva was caught up in. Salva was separated from his family, and had walked his entire life, refugee camp to camp. He lost all the people that were important to him on the way. At the beginning of the book, Salva was 11, by the end he is 21. Leaving a badly managed refugee camp, Salva was named leader of all the boys following him, boys of the age he was when the war first started. They were called “The Lost Boys”.
Towards the end, Salva was brought to New York where he was educated and learnt that his dad was still alive. Seeing how unhealthy his dad was, he had the great idea to dig deep water wells so that no one in Africa would die of thirst.
On the other hand, this book also tells the story of a little girl called Nya who went to the pond every day to get water for her family; she would walk 3 hours to go and 3 to come back. The water was not clean enough, so Nya’s sister got sick, but one day workers dug a deep-water well and Nya no longer had to walk, and she finally could go to school. The leader of the workers happened to be Salva. I find it very interesting that the author made us follow the two stories and then BOOM – the big punch: Salva was the one bringing water to Nya’s village!
This book teaches me that war or even civil wars are completely ineffective. People are killed for absolutely no reason; well, sometimes the war finishes by accomplishing a little something, but if you ask me, it is rare. People lost family members and loved ones, sometime even causing trauma towards the person targeted. I believe Salva was very strong to go through that and even today being able to explain word for word the salvaged past of his. He was even invited to speak at a TED Talk to spread awareness!
The book was interesting since it is based on a true story. Before my teacher read this book to me, I think I never really realized how awful war really is. Why can’t everyone get along? We are all human after all.
