A Long Walk to Water( Linda Sue Park)
2008
- children's fiction
- refugees, fiction
- survival, fiction
- blacks, fiction
- africa, east, fiction
- nyt:childrens-middle-grade=2013-07-28
- water
- blacks
- juvenile fiction
- history
The story
When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.
What it’s like
Plain, unadorned prose carries this middle-grade book: short declarative sentences, a steady third-person voice that stays close to a boy's perspective, and a clean, almost documentary sensory palette of dust, heat, thorn scrub, and the sudden weight of water. The alternating chapters move between the 1985 journey and a later storyline set in a Sudanese village, so the reading rhythm is brisk and purposeful, with short chapters that end on hooks. Its emotional register is earnest and hopeful rather than bleak, and the arc follows a young boy who loses everything and keeps walking, gathering friendship and resolve along the way. Intensity is moderate: there are armed soldiers, the chaos of a village attack, animal dangers, hunger, thirst and deaths of companions, all described briefly and without gore, so the fear is real but rarely graphic. It suits a quiet afternoon, a classroom read-aloud, or a reader wanting an emotionally strong story that isn't gentle or cozy, and it fits readers drawn to resilience stories, young readers, and anyone wanting a true-inspired account of survival and community.
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