Reading Response to A Long To Water by Linda Sue Park by Max Kessler 811


             The story "A Long Walk to Water," by Linda Sue Park was two seperate stories about two seperate characters from Southern Sudan, Salva and Nya, from seperate time periods. They bring two stories to the table, Salva got seperated from his family when a war outbroke in his village, and he journies through Sudan andall over Africa. Nya walked for three hours twice a day just to get a very small amount of water. A theme throughout this story is having to cope with changeand live on.
              In Slava's side of his story he is forced to deal with change many times. One example of this is when Salva gets seperated from his family, because he is in school and he cannot stop by his family's house or he will be shot or killed by the rebels. He is forced to walk and live with people he has never met before and make connections with them, and fend for himself. At the beginning of his treacherous walk Salva gets grouped with his village, but then on the first night, while sleeping in a barn, "he rushed to the door to look out. Nobody. Nothing. They had left him. He was alone."He must adjust and move on if he wants to survive in this environment.
               In Nya's story every year for five months her and her village are forced to move to the lake for dry season. Which means needing to wait for hours for the gourds of water to get even near to been full, whereas in her regular home the walk towards the water would be much easier but the one right near the lake would take much longer. Every year, twice her and her family would have to bring all of their clothing and everything else necessary in her house to the other house. Nya must be able and willing to adjust many times to her daily routine and house twice a year.
              Salva also goes through the change of having a person look out for him from having to be all by himself. As Salva is walking along with his new group he spots someone, "When the man was only a few steps away, Salva suddenly found his voice. 'Uncle!' he cried out and ran into his arms."He then became very attached and loving towards his powerful and strong uncle. I think his uncle gives him hope of finding his family and gives a father figure to look up to again.
            This book is on the whole was extraordinarily good. It really made me think about how many kids have to be going through this right now and how people should try to raise awareness so things like what happened with Salva happen less often. This book has a happy ending, in that Salva starts a funding project for Nya and her tribe and gets them a water fountain. A great ending for a great book.