A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

Black Friday. It’s one of the craziest days of the year. It used to be just known as the Friday-after-Thanksgiving, but now it’s the day we expect some poor soul to get trampled to death by a frenzied mob converging on a storefront at exactly 5:00AM, all in the quest to grab the last Tickle Me Elmo. I cringe to think that the big-box stores count on such animal behavior from us in order to make their year-end profit margin.

Once in a while a book comes along that reminds us we can step outside a world that has such low expectations of us. A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park, is a book that makes you think about your potential to exceed low expectations and to make a difference. I won’t lie to you. It’s a story about war. It’s a book about tragedy. It's also a story of hope and perseverance.

The story takes place in Sudan. Sudan is the largest country in Africa, but it is known for the numerous evils that have descended on it. There is war. There is racism. There is religious intolerance. There is genocide-some might call it the hidden holocaust.

The book begins with the story of a boy named Salva. In the opening chapters we quickly experience what it means to run for your life. You will learn that Salva is one of the Lost Boys. The Lost Boys were given this name from a reference to the lost boys in the book, Peter Pan. Instead of Neverland, many of the Lost Boys of Sudan found refuge in the United States. Some even located in Minnesota.

The other main character in the book is a girl named Nya. She toils everyday just to provide water for her family. She has to walk miles to the nearest pond to carry water back and forth. All her life consists of is obtaining the most basic element of human survival, something many of us easily take for granted.

Salva’s story starts in 1985. Nya’s begins in 2008. Their stories are separated by time but intertwined by location. One of the characters is based on an actual person, the other is fictional. As you read you might be tempted to jump ahead to see how the author weaves their two stories together.

In the video below, Linda Sue Park introduces her new book and you can also meet the actual person that inspired it:




I encourage all of you to read Linda Sue Park's new book, not only because it is an inspiring story of survival, but because we need to. Many of us don’t know what has happened in Sudan, and there seems to be too many converging evils upon this land for us to simply ignore. Her book also serves to remind us all what we take for granted, what deserves our thanksgiving, and what treasure is really worth seeking.


For more information about the Lost Boys, Sudan, and the work of Salva Dut, check the following websites:
Water for Sudan
Video of Linda Sue Park and Salva Dut at Amazon.com
Lost Boys of Chicago Lost Boys Documentary Film
U. of M. Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies
Following the Lost Boys on Minnesota MPR Midmorning (2-23-2006)
Lost Boys Art


If this book sounds interesting, then you might like:

Home of the Brave, by Katherine Applegate

The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman by Ben H. Winters

The entire sixth-period Music Fundamentals class was divided into three rock-n-roll bands. They would represent the sixties, eighties, and nineties eras. Why skip the nineteen-seventies? “Don’t Ask,” Tenny Boyer would tell you.

The Music Fundamentals teacher, Ms. Finkleman, gave the excited class just a few minutes to name their bands. The sixties band, Band Number One, debated between Barf Hammer or Barf Machine.

A member of Band Number Two, the eighties band, suggested the name Floccinaucinihilipilification since it is one of the longest words in the English dictionary. (How do you fit that on a T-shirt?)

A girl named Haley suggested the name Ms. Pinkbottom, since that was the name of her recently deceased dog. Can you believe someone then had the nerve to suggest, M43, the number of the actual bus that hit her dog?

As Band Number Two floundered, the normally comatose brain of Tenny Boyer lit up like flashing Christmas tree lights. Ignoring his stiff band room chair and the buzz of excitement around him, Tenny considered how names of classic rock bands feel like the music they play, like Metallica. It dawned on him that some band names are just like little stories, such as the Grateful Dead. All of a sudden, a girl in the class named Bethesda shook Tenny Boyer from his reverie. He smiled and said, “The Careless Errors.” “How about the Careless Errors?”

Everyone in Band Number Three stopped, turned, and looked at Bethesda. She would make the final decision about the name, not Tenny. He wasn't the one responsible for the best thing that ever happened to sixth period Music Fundamentals. This was all due to Bethesda Fielding and her discovery about Ms. Finkleman, aka, Little Miss Mystery.

What did Bethesda unearth that could possibly scare the quiet Ms. Finkelman to change her entire curriculum from English folk ballads of the sixteenth century to the raucous rhythms of Bon Jovi? How could a goody-goody like Bethesda delve so low as to blackmail the meekest teacher at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School? Surely the rock-n-roll project will act as a conduit to finally ignite Tenny Boyer to like school. But, will the Careless Errors unfortunately live up to their name?

Find out in a school story that mixes in both humor and mystery with a twist you may not expect in the book, The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, by Ben H. Winters.


(This book may be a good fit for a class read-aloud.)

Here There Be Monsters by HP Newquist

[Show Slide Show-pics from book and other sources]

In his poem, the Kraken, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote:[pic1]

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep,
The Kraken sleepeth:

Kraken! Were they just creatures conjured up in tales told by ancient mariners or would there be monsters hidden in the murky ocean depths from our reach even today? [pic1]

"Kraken!" a sailor screams. Perhaps you remember this scene from the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: [video 1]

The Kraken, or as you may have guessed, the giant squid [pic3], has been one of the most mysterious and feared creatures of the deep. Scientists have been in a search for the concealed giant for hundreds of years, but only recently have they seen one alive. Most amazing to me is how little evidence scientists have collected so far about this reclusive cephalopod. Here’s how the author of the book, Here There be Monsters, puts it: [pic4]

“Humans have been to the moon six times and retrieved more than two thousand rocks. The moon is 250,000 miles away from earth. Yet scientists have collected only about two dozen specimens of the colossal squid, a creature that lives less than one mile under the ocean. It is odd that we have more specimens from a place that is a quarter of a million miles away than we do of one of the biggest creatures on the earth, even though it lives right here in our oceans.” (p.47)

Believe it or not, the first picture of a live giant squid was taken only five years ago. [pic5] Before the 2005 picture, giant squid were only observed as dead specimens that washed ashore about every 50-100 years. Scientists were lucky to get even one specimen to investigate in a lifetime. The belly of a whale, in the meantime, provided key information for scientists to continue their study. For example, the mouths of giant squid, which look like giant bird beaks, have been found undigested in the stomachs of sperm whales for years.[pic6] The skin of a sperm whale often shows battle scars from their encounters with the kraken. [pic7] The intensity of the struggle is clearly displayed in this image. Notice the scars from the razor sharp suckers of the squid’s tentacles.

If you take another look at a sperm whale’s skin you’ll also notice gashes that are longer and straighter. [pic9] Can you fathom a creature that could lash a sperm whale like this? The clandestine creature that scored these marks into the skin of a sperm whale was photographed and filmed for the first time just two years ago. Could these marks suggest a different species of squid, one even larger and more lethal than the giant squid?

Kraken!

Consider yourself invited to one of the greatest mysteries of the natural world. [pic 9] Stare down the eye of the legendary kraken in the book, Here There be Monsters, by HP Newquist, if you dare.


You might also like the graphic novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and, Tentacles by Roland Smith: