A Long Walk To Water By Linda Sue Park

In the book “A Long Walk to Water,” by Linda Sue Park, there are two stories that take place in Southern Sudan. Both stories overlap each other at the end. One of the stories is a fictional story and takes place in 2008 with a character named Nya. The other story is the true story of a boy named Salva and it takes place in 1980. Nya’s and Salva’s story both have social and cultural issues that they must face. One of the main cultural issue is the fact that there is no water anywhere near them. With the main social issue they face is that they live in poverty. The desert is so hot that there is a deficiency of water.
Nya is an eleven-year-old girl who has to go on long walks to get water. She takes half of her day just to go and get water for

When he was walking he only had a little bit of water and had to decide if he was going to try to save the people or keep himself alive. He was walking for a long time and he encounter people that were lying on the floor many had died but there were a few people that were barely alive. When, “Salva looked at the hollow eyes and the cracked lips of the men lying on the hot sand” his uncle yelled ‘If you give them your water, you will not have enough for yourself!’” (Parks 56). He is torn if he should give up his water to help them because if he does then he wouldn’t have had any more water for himself. A social issue that Nya faces is that she lives in poverty. Her family doesn’t have much and is constantly moving. For example, in the story it states that her family “had no house and had to sleep in makeshift shelters” (Parks32). Since her family was always moving they didn’t have enough money or resources to make their own house. Her entire family lived in shelters every time they

He also lives in poverty. An example of him living in poverty would be that he doesn’t have shoes. As seen when the book states, “Salva stubbed his bare toe on a rock, and his whole toenail came off” (Parks 53). Providing an image of him not having shoes and hitting a rock with his toenail coming off. He had to keep walking in the hot sand with his barefoot. Here in the united states the fact that his toenail came off may not be a big deal but having to walk miles with a fallen toenail makes things much worse.
The ages that would be best suited to teach and read “A Long Walk to Water” are ten to twelve-year-olds. The grade levels for this book would be around fourth to sixth grade Reason being that there is a lot of violence within the story. Also, this book is a longer than most children would be use to and the book has no pictures within the book. The older students can take into consideration what is going on they might look at things differently once they read the book. Linda Sue Parks intend the book to be read by ten to