Title: A Long Walk to Water
Author: Linda Sue Park
Narrator: David Baker, Cynthia Bishop
Length: 2hrs 41 min
Format: Audiobook/book
Age group: 9+
These are troubled times. Turn on the news and our children are just as likely as we are to be barraged and confused by the turmoil around the world. The word refugee comes up often in this context and raises many questions for kids: Who are refugees? How do they come to be in such a desperate state – displaced, on the run, seeking respite anywhere they can find it? By telling the true story of Salva Dut, A Long Walk to Water presents parents and kids a chance to understand some of the forces and faces behind one such refugee crisis.
Salva Dut was one of the infamous “Lost Boys of Sudan,” one of some 20,000 children caught up in the turmoil of the civil war between North and South Sudan in the 1980s. While the war raged on for over 20 years, these children – often orphaned by the warfare – fled their homes. They spent their childhoods wandering from border to border and from one vast refugee camp to the next in search of elusive safe harbor.
A Long Walk to Water adeptly interlaces two stories – one of Salva’s journey, and the other of Nyaa, a young Sudanese girl living in a village where clean water is also elusive. These two tales intersect in an unexpected and wonderful way at the end. It inspires empathy, hope and a call to action. I highly recommend both the book and the audiobook as a must-read for the times. Narrators David Baker and Cynthia Bishop do a gentle and empathetic reading. Interestingly, their dialect coach, James Achueil, was himself one of the Lost Boys.
Note: This is not easy subject matter. Salva faces seemingly insurmountable losses and setbacks on his harrowing journey across deserts and crocodile-infested waters. But it is an important story to know, to understand the world we live in, and to hear how – with some help – empowerment can follow even the greatest hopelessness. With children at the younger end of the age-range, it is probably a book best read (or listened to) together and discussed.
Access: The link above is through Audible at Amazon.com. Depending upon where you live in the world, you can likely also access this audiobook for free through your public library and other resources that I am blogging about, like Hoopla.
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