A Long Walk to Water - Review

I tend to be wary of children's. books that 

1) are historical fiction 

and

2) attempt to get the reader to care about an important issue.

I've found that several children's books that undertake these goals often fall short.

They tend to be chock full of information or tend to be overtly preoccupied with making sure the reader knows that this is an important! issue and the reader absolutely needs to care about it in order to be a moral individual. Meanwhile, the characters, the setting, even the plot seem to be second thoughts or reading it becomes dull and dreary (anyone ever read the Elsie Dinsmore series as a child?). 

Or the opposite occurs. The characters, setting and plot are engrossing, but when you go to look up information about the book, you find there's a lot of bending of the truth, if not complete falsehoods. (See The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas for example.) 

Once in a while, however, there is a book that surprises my expectations. It's engaging, it's accurate, and it really does make you care about the issue presented in the book. 

A Long Walk to Water is one such story. It's hard not to care about Nya's daily, lengthy walk or Salva's constant trials and tribulations. I found myself invested in their stories and couldn't wait to find out what happened. This book is also pretty accurate for a children's historical fiction novel. Salva is real. His story is real. The war was real. Having to walk eight hours every day to get water is real. And this. book does a fantastic job of pointing out the seriousness of this issue. By the end, I really did care about the lack of drinkable, accessible water in Sudan. Not that didn't I care before, but this book highlighted how crucial this issue really is. When people get ill because they don't have enough water, how they feel (physically and emotionally) when they don't have enough to drink, how worrisome it is when a loved one is close to death and there is no water nearby, water that might very well save their life. Ms. Park does a fantastic job of making her readers feel like this so, so important with stooping to moral posturing or having uninspiring characters or a bland plot. 

In short, this is an all around wonderful book that manages to be both enlightening and engrossing.