Whoa.
Really. Whoa.
That's pretty much the only word I could utter
when I finished reading this week's Pick.
I'll have more than one word for you on A
Long Walk to Water right after this.
If you know even a little about what's going
on in the world, you know that the country
of Sudan is a troubled place. But before the
latest round of genocide, there was another
conflict—one that left the main character
in this story, Salva, without a family or
a country.
A Long Walk to Water is technically fiction,
but it's based on the experiences of a real
man who was one of the lost boys of Sudan.
The short version of Salva's journey is that
he spent all of his teenage years (and then
some) enduring unimaginable, life-threatening
hardships as he fled the fighting in his country.
So really, the only response you can have
to this book is whoa. Whoa because it is,
literally, impossible to imagine going through
what Salva went through. But also whoa because
Salva manages to make something of his life
and to give back to Sudan—which is the second
storyline in this slim book.
The writing in A Long Walk to Water isn't
fancy, and the storytelling itself is pretty
simple. But that is, perhaps, what will make
this book stay with you—Linda Sue Park lets
Salva's story speak powerfully and eloquently
for itself.
