A Long Walk to Water
Linda Sue Park (2010)
“A true story of survival across two timelines: a boy walks 1,500 miles across a war-torn continent so that, decades later, a girl will not have to.”
At a Glance
A Long Walk to Water tells two parallel true stories set in Sudan. In 1985, eleven-year-old Salva Dut flees the Second Sudanese Civil War and walks thousands of miles through desert and danger to a refugee camp. In 2008, eleven-year-old Nya walks eight hours every day to fetch water from a pond that makes her family sick. The timelines converge when Salva, now an adult leading a nonprofit called Water for Sudan, arrives in Nya's village to drill a well. They never meet on the page, but his survival made her life possible.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
A Long Walk to Water has sold over four million copies and is one of the most widely assigned middle school texts in the United States. It introduced millions of young readers to the Lost Boys of Sudan and to global water inequality. The novel functions simultaneously as literature and as advocacy — Park and Salva Dut have used its platform to raise funds for Water for South Sudan's drilling projects. It is a rare case of a middle grade novel that has had quantifiable real-world impact.
Diction Profile
Accessible and direct — short declarative sentences, no ornamental vocabulary, calibrated for middle school without being simplified
Low