A Long Walk to Water- Linda Sue Park

A Long Walk to Water, is a wonderful chapter book written by Linda Sue Park. This book focuses on two different stories throughout the whole book. One of the story's is about a little girl named Nya, who travels to get fresh drinking water for her family everyday. The water is almost a day away walking distance. The other story is about a boy named Salva who is separated from his family during war in Sudan, He becomes one of the lost boys, who continues to travel north to escape the war. He ends up getting taking in from a family New York. He then gets an email from a family member that his family is alive. He then goes back to Sudan and sees his father. He then goes back to New York and comes up with an organzation to bring fresh drinking water to Sudan. These stories end up tying together when Salva build a well for fresh drinking water in Nya's village, even though they are from different tribes.

Was this a good story?
I loved this story. If I teach 5th grade or up, I will definitely be using this book in my class. I really like the concept of hope in this story. Although, most students will not be able to relate to the same experiences, they may have experiences similar to these ones. I think they too, would find this very interesting.

What did the author try to tell you in this story? 
One most have hope to get through such hard obstacles.

Is the culture accurately portrayed?
Yes, the cultures in this book are accurately portrayed.

How did a character grow in the story?
Salva grows in the story from a little boy to a man who leads over a 1000 other men.

Lexile level: 720L (ages 10-12)

Onomatopoeia: The author uses words like crunch! splash!
Simile: On page 8, she uses a simile to describe a bomb dropping jet. The novel says " overhead, a jet plane veered away like a sleek evil bird," (8). The comparison is quite accurate considering the attacks were a surprise to everyone.  The  jets would drop bombs that destroyed the villages then move on to the next. The jets were very sleek and evil.
Metaphor: This whole book is a metaphor in the way that "walking" is journeying

Park, Linda. A Long Walk to Water (2010) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.