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A Long Walk to Water | Linda Sue Park | Sudan | Clarion Books | 2010 | ISBN:978-0547577319
Synopsis:
A Long Walk to Water tells the story of two eleven-year-old South Sudanese children. Salva is a young boy living during the civil unrest of 1985, and Nya is a young girl of 2008 who spends her days making the long and difficult trek to retrieve water from the local pond. Salva is one of the many “lost boys of Sudan” who journeys thousands of miles in search of peace and refuge while enduring hunger, war, and wild animal attacks. Salva is able to start a new life in the United States and eventually returns to build wells in his homeland. Salva’s and Nya’s stories are told simultaneously in alternating chapters and converge years later in an encouraging twist that leaves the reader with a sense of hope for the future of the Sudanese people.
A Long Walk to Water tells the story of two eleven-year-old South Sudanese children. Salva is a young boy living during the civil unrest of 1985, and Nya is a young girl of 2008 who spends her days making the long and difficult trek to retrieve water from the local pond. Salva is one of the many “lost boys of Sudan” who journeys thousands of miles in search of peace and refuge while enduring hunger, war, and wild animal attacks. Salva is able to start a new life in the United States and eventually returns to build wells in his homeland. Salva’s and Nya’s stories are told simultaneously in alternating chapters and converge years later in an encouraging twist that leaves the reader with a sense of hope for the future of the Sudanese people.
Awards and Honors:
- 2011 Jane Addams Children’s Book Award (NY)
- 2012 Black-Eyed Susan Award Nominee (MD)
- 2012 Flicker Tale Children’s Book Award (ND)
- 2012 Great Lakes Book Award Nominee (MI)
- 2012 Kentucky Blue Grass Award Nominee
- 2012 Maine Student Book Award Nominee
- 2013 Golden Sower Award Nominee (NE)
- 2013 South Carolina Association of School Librarians Award Nominee
- 2013 Young Hoosier Book Award Nominee (IN)
A. Rationale for Use in the English Classroom
A Long Walk to Water uses a unique format of alternating narrators to weave together the story and struggle of life in Sudan that spans over twenty years. The author, Linda Sue Park, clearly illustrates the perspectives of both main characters, Salva and Nya, and provides each character with a distinct voice. As readers move through Salva’s and Nya’s stories, they will be able to easily identify character traits, the outside influences that shape those traits, and universal themes that span cultures. If additional texts such as non-fiction and poetry are incorporated into instruction, students would be able to draw connections between those texts and A Long Walk to Water. For example, from the resources provided, students will be able to determine the central ideas of both informational and literary texts (CCSS ELA RI 7.2 & CCSS ELA RL 7.2), analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text (CCSS ELA RL 7.6), cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text (CCSS ELA RL 7.1 & CCSS ELA RI 7.1), and can draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. (CCSS ELA W 7.9)
The common core standards that have been identified are tied to the seventh grade; however, the text would be appropriate to use in any middle grade ELA classroom and could be used in conjunction with other texts in ninth or tenth grade classes.
B. Before Reading Activities
Before reading, utilize one or more of these resources to allow students to gain some background information about the unrest, the lack of clean drinking water, and the predominate cultures of South Sudan. Have students record their findings on a K-W-L chart or other graphic organizer.
- View Author’s commentary about the novel – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkxkisRUmMM – This short video provides a brief summary of the story as well as biographical information about Salva. The video also touches on the water crisis in Sudan and Salva’s efforts to bring clean water to the region.
- Learn about the Dinka and Neur tribes of Sudan
- Dinka People (Wikipedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinka_people
- Nuer People (Wikipedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuer_people
- National Geographic’s Sudan Facts page – http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/sudan-facts/ - Discover more information about Sudan, her people and their culture, and the unrest that plagues the region.
- Watch an excerpt from the video “God Grew Tired of Us” (view the segment titled, “From Sudan to the United States”) http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/activity/god-grew-tired-of-us-the-lost-boys-of-sudan/?ar_a=1
- Additional Option - Have students discuss the historical, cultural, and geographic factors that contributed to Sudan’s civil war and some of the consequences the civil war—which lasted over twenty years—had on Sudan and its peoples, including orphaned children, violence, famine, and disease.
- Water, the World Water Crisis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRGZOCaD9sQ
To develop students’ understanding as they read the novel, have them complete one or more of the following activities:
1. Create a Venn Diagram that compares life in Sudan with life in America
2. Describe one way that that author, Linda Sue Park, has created different points of view for Nya and for Salva. How are the two characters different?
3. Learn about refugees - To gain further insights into the difficulties refugees face, share with the class two stanzas from an anonymous poem, “Cast Out”. The author was one of 10,000 children sent to England as part of an effort to save young Jews from Nazi-controlled nations just before World War II began in 1939.
o Have students read the poem and ask them to identify the key word(s) in each stanza.
o What does it mean to "survive alone"? To see oneself as "a ghost adrift without a country"? Use the key words to discuss the title of the poem. What does it mean to be "cast out"? In what sense is the author "lost"?
o Have students compare and contrast the poet's experiences with Salva’s. What similarities do you notice? How do you account for differences?
Cast Out
From We Came as Children: A Collective Autobiography. Edited by Karen Gershon. Harcourt.
Sometimes I think it would have been
easier for me to die
together with my parents than
to have been surrendered by
them to survive alone...
Sometimes I feel I am a ghost
adrift without identity
what as a child I valued most
forever has escaped from me
I have been cast out and am lost.
4. Expeditionary Learning in partnership with Student Achievement Partners has created several lessons to use in conjunction with the novel, A Long Walk to Water and that support the Common Core State Standards. Listed below are portions of several of the lessons from the seventh grade module. The close reading activity listed below is excerpted from Lesson 10. The full module can be found at http://commoncoresuccess.elschools.org/curriculum/ela/grade-7/module-1/unit-1
- Ask students to turn to page 33 (the start of Chapter 6) in A Long Walk to Water. Invite them to listen as you read aloud, JUST Nya’s story (ending with “Or was it now their turn to lose someone?”).
- Invite students to turn and talk: “Why is Nya scared of the Dinka? And why is Salva scared of the Nuer?”
“Sudanese Tribes Confront Modern War”
By Karl Vick, Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, July 7, 1999; Page A1
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EXCERPT 1:
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1. They are the Dinka and the Nuer, the largest tribes in southern Sudan. Both greet the dawn by singing. Both live in square huts with round, uneven roofs. Both walk the roadless plain split by the White Nile. And both honor their scrawny, hump-backed cattle as the center of the temporal world, at once wealth on the hoof and a mystical link to the spiritual plane [level].
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a. With a partner, reread paragraph 1 out loud. What does the word “both” refer to? Why does the author use the word “both” four times?
b. In paragraph 1, what do you think the word temporal might mean?
c. In paragraph 2, reread the last sentence, and explain it to your partner in your own words.
d. In paragraph 3, what does the word phase mean? When did things begin to change?
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2. The Nuer word for “thousand” means “lost in the forest,” because that’s where your cattle would be if you had that many of them. Almost no one does, however—in no small part because Dinka and Nuer have been stealing cattle from each other for as long as anyone can remember. Cattle raiding is a hoary [old, ancient] tradition of pastoralists [farmers] throughout East Africa, as natural here as a young man’s hungering for enough cows to pay the bride price for a wife, as normal as a neighbor striking at the intruders he sees hogging prime grazing land.
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3. If people died in these raids, it was “maybe one, two or three,” said Madut. And the victims were almost always warriors, slain with the spears that were still the weapons of choice in southern Sudan in 1983, when the war against the Arab north entered its current phase. That year, the Khartoum government imposed [forced on others] Islamic law on the entire country, including the parts that were not Muslim, like the south, where people mostly adhere [stick to] to traditional beliefs or Christianity. Rebellious southerners formed the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, and young Dinka and Nuer began to carry AK-47s.
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For the full version of the article, go to - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/daily/july99/sudan7.htm
D. After Reading Activities
D. After Reading Activities
After reading the text, A Long Walk to Water, extend students’ understanding by engaging them in one or more of these activities:
1. "Who am I?" is a question that each of us asks. In answering, we define our identity. Divide the class into small groups and have each create two identity webs for Salva-one when he first fled his school and started his journey and one after Salva returns to Sudan. The webs should include words to describe Salva from his own point of view as well as the labels he might have received from society. Then have students circle the words Salva would have used to describe himself and underline the labels others attach to him.
o Most people define their identity by using categories important to their culture. They include, not only race, gender, age, and physical characteristics, but also ties to a particular religion, group, and nation.
o Have the students review their identity webs for Salva. How did the labels others attach to Salva influence the way he saw himself? The choices he made? How did his past experiences shape his identity?
2. Have students read the poem, “The Past” by Ha Jin and identify and explain which stanzas connect to Salva’s identity and perception of himself throughout the story.
3. Salva and Nya have many similarities and differences. Trace how culture, time, and place influence the development of each character’s identity. (from Expeditionary Learning in partnership with Student Achievement Partners. The full module can be found at http://commoncoresuccess.elschools.org/curriculum/ela/grade-7/module-1/unit-1
Note: This activity could be started after the students have read the first few chapters of the text. Students could record their ideas in a graphic organizer and trace each character’s development throughout the story.
4. Create a timeline of the events in Salva’s and Nya’s life
5. Read the essay, “Cultural Roots and the Invisible Bridge: A Perspective from the Dinka” by Francis M. Deng. How do Salva and those he encounters demonstrate/embody the values of the Dinka tribe? What are the challenges that someone encounters as they try to adapt to a new culture?
6. Learn more about Salva’s foundation: Water for Sudan at www.waterforsudan.org
7. Salva wanted to return to Sudan to make a difference for all of its people. What problem(s) in America would you like to change? Identify strategies that you might use to make that change or improvement.
8. Read the article or excerpts from the article “South Sudan: The State that Fell Apart in a Week” by Daniel Howden, The Guardian, 23 December 2013. - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/23/south-sudan-state-that-fell-apart-in-a-week and identify root causes of the further unrest in South Sudan.
9. Learn more about The Republic of South Sudan - http://www.goss.org/index.php/homepage/9-general/95-the-republic-of-south-sudan
The Past
By Ha Jin
I have supposed my past is a part of myself.
As my shadow appears whenever I’m in the sun
the past cannot be thrown off and its weight
must be borne, or I will become another man.
But I saw someone wall his past into a garden
whose produce is always in fashion.
If you enter his property without permission
he will welcome you with a watchdog or a gun.
I saw someone set up his past as a harbor.
Wherever it sails, his boat is safe—
if a storm comes, he can always head for home.
His voyage is the adventure of a kite.
I saw someone drop his past like trash.
He buried it and shed it altogether.
He has shown me that without the past
one can also move ahead and get somewhere.
Like a shroud my past surrounds me,
but I will cut it and stitch it,
to make good shoes with it,
shoes that fit my feet.
"The Past" in Facing Shadows by Ha Jin. Hanging Loose Press, 1996, 63.
E. Connections to Other Content Areas:
The content addressed in A Long Walk to Water can be easily connected to both social studies and science curriculum. Social studies concepts such as imperialism, culture, genocide, immigration, refugees, and civil war could be explored with the use of this text. Science concepts including the physics behind the functioning of a well, the biology in the contraction and treatment of water-borne illnesses, or the chemistry of water purification could stem from this text.
F. Other Resources:
“The Lost Boys of Sudan” PBS, 2004 (video)
