A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

Park, Linda Sue. A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story. 2010. 128p. ISBN 9780547251271. Available at FIC PAR on the library shelves as well as an ebook from Overdrive,

Nya is a Sudanese girl. Though the year is 2008, her daily job is to walk half the morning from her village to the closest pond to retrieve water, then make the return trip home, only to head back again that afternoon. Every day, Nya travels to the pond twice a day, hauling a heavy container of water on the way back. In the summer months, the village moves to a larger lake, where there often is strife with other tribes. Nya would like to go to school and learn how to read and write, but there simply isn't time,

Salva is a Sudanese boy. It is 1985, and he is lucky because he gets to go to school. But when the village is attacked, Salva and the rest of the students flee in the bush. Too young to live by himself, Salva follows crowds of refugees as they slowly walk across Sudan to the relative shelter of a United Nations refugee camp in Ethiopia. Along the way, Salva has to endure the elements, the wild animals, and the violence that humans inflict on each other.

Told in alternating fashion, Nya and Salva's stories connect in a powerful and life changing way. Salva is the proof that there is always hope, and that all that is required is to take one step forward. Fans of realistic fiction will enjoy this story based on a real boy's life and trials as he escaped a war-torn country only to return and give it life again.