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A review by abroadintime
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
4.0
This is a small, but incredibly powerful book. It's not long—it would be a great middle-grades read-aloud over the course of a few weeks. It's packed full of so many important topics of discussion that I would say could be (and should be) digested by students as young as 3rd or 4th grade, given an appropriate amount of time for thoughtful discussion.
A Long Walk to Water is based on the true story of Salva Dut, a young boy whose childhood and family life in southern Sudan is completely upended by civil war in the 1980s. He finds himself alone and isolated without anyone he knows in the midst of a great exodus to flee from country to country in search of refuge. His positive attitude and daily determination to survive (and help others do the same) quickly elevates him as a leader and he eventually finds himself leading a group of 1500 lost boys like himself to another refugee camp.
A modern-day side-story of a young girl, Nya, who must walk hours a day to fetch water for her family is also woven throughout the book and both stories are beautifully tied together at the end.
A Long Walk to Water is an excellent introduction to the conflict between North and South Sudan, and it puts so many important things into perspective—how to push forward through hardship, how much we have to be grateful for, how definitions of success and wealth vary around the world, and what it means to truly care for others (to name just a few paradigms it might shift!).
I particularly loved Salva's own encouragement to young readers at the end of the book:
I also love that this book includes information for how teachers might use it to cultivate a meaningful charity program in their school to encourage young readers to rally around the essential idea of what it means to work together as a community to support those in need and make the world a better place.
A Long Walk to Water is based on the true story of Salva Dut, a young boy whose childhood and family life in southern Sudan is completely upended by civil war in the 1980s. He finds himself alone and isolated without anyone he knows in the midst of a great exodus to flee from country to country in search of refuge. His positive attitude and daily determination to survive (and help others do the same) quickly elevates him as a leader and he eventually finds himself leading a group of 1500 lost boys like himself to another refugee camp.
A modern-day side-story of a young girl, Nya, who must walk hours a day to fetch water for her family is also woven throughout the book and both stories are beautifully tied together at the end.
A Long Walk to Water is an excellent introduction to the conflict between North and South Sudan, and it puts so many important things into perspective—how to push forward through hardship, how much we have to be grateful for, how definitions of success and wealth vary around the world, and what it means to truly care for others (to name just a few paradigms it might shift!).
I particularly loved Salva's own encouragement to young readers at the end of the book:
To young people, I would like to say: Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting. Quitting leads to much less happiness in life than perseverance and hope.
I also love that this book includes information for how teachers might use it to cultivate a meaningful charity program in their school to encourage young readers to rally around the essential idea of what it means to work together as a community to support those in need and make the world a better place.