A Long Walk to Water

         One book that I read this summer is A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. I found this book really inspiring and it had a lot of themes and ideas. One thing that I really liked about this book was that both sides of the stories taught me a lot of life lessons and the story ended up tying together in a really surprising yet sentimental way. It had a lot of themes in this book and one was faith in yourself and others. Both sides of the stories showed this. Nya's side showed it in two ways; One by keeping her sister healthy and by getting the water every day without fail and the other by the townspeople keeping courage on the school and well. Salva's side showed the lesson to keep going and to keep trying by him keeping walking every single day for years and everyday he kept saying to himself just one more day, last one more day for about 7-8 years until eventually he with lasted the whole war. 
         
       This book really made it clear to me how much we as people take things for advantage and how much we take things for advantage. Salva and Nya had to give up everything even their families were put in danger. I found it really touching how Salva went to help Nya's tribe at the end even though they were the "enemy" tribes. It's book made me feel really helpless as throughout all those years displayed in the book there wasn't all that much progress in Africa, and this is still happening. People are still in danger for the simple necessities such as drinking water. It made me want to take steps somehow to help.
       
        In this book two different stories of two different people in different time periods come together to combine into a touching display of change and hope that it will all get better. Both change and hope were two, more subtle themes in this book. Nya is from a tribe in Africa, her story takes place in 2008. The other story is based around Salva, who is from a different Arican tribe (the enemy to Nya's), he starts off as a boy during an african war and it takes us through 8 years of his life. He lost his family when the war broke out as he was at school and had to get out of Africa, surviving on his own. Nya's story had troubles as did Salva but in the end they come together and it all turns out happy ok. This book taught me the themes of hope, respect and not giving up, lessons to make the most of what I have and made me feel a lot more greatful for the simple necessities in life.
     
      The author of this book showed the themes in clear, touching ways through the book. She portrayed the strength and determination of both characters and made it hard to believe that this was based off of a true story. She made the characters relatable in a strange way, as although most people cant relate to having such struggles they showed the characters thoughts of families and instincts as well as decisions coming up. This book portrayed strong themes as well as character traits and lessons. She made this true story something more than what it is as she made the reader want to do something more towards the subject.