File Under: 13 Suspicious Events by Lemony Snicket

This past weekend, I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which is held on the campus of the University of Southern California. It is a free weekend event which I highly recommend if you live nearby. There are all sorts of booksellers, in all sorts of categories, plus many other bookish things to discover and purchase, like posters, tote bags, journals, and nerdy t-shirts. All throughout the weekend, authors are giving talks, doing book signings, or teaching cooking classes, and there are people reading poetry, performing live music, puppet show-ing, and goodness knows what else! Some of the author panels, or “conversations,” require a $1 ticket to reserve a seat, but otherwise you are free to walk around and attend whatever catches your eye.

I attended two author conversations that were both very popular– John Green (The Fault in Our Stars, and several other titles, but he’s more of a 8th grade-and-up author), and Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket.) I saw Daniel Handler do a reading last year, but this time it was just him talking about how he got into writing and the surprising success of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and his new series, All the Wrong Questions. His panel was moderated by Ransom Riggs, author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, another book I quite enjoyed reading, and together they made a great interview team. I met them both afterward to get my books signed. (Authors are my celebrities, what can I say? It’s all very exciting!)

This particular book takes place in the All the Wrong Questions world of Stain’d-by-the Sea, a town that once had a thriving ink industry until the sea dried up and the octopi that produced the ink disappeared. The town is now practically abandoned, except for a few locals who still live there. A young Lemony Snicket is stationed here with his mentor, but since she is pointless and no help at all, he begins working on some mysteries on the side.

Here we have 13 short mysteries to solve alongside Lemony Snicket. You can put your own detective skills to work as you read each story and then flip to the back of the book to see if you were right. This is in the style of the Encyclopedia Brown books I read when I was a kid, in which the neighborhood boy detective solved disputes by using his keen powers of observation, with the answers located separately in the back. (One of the character names actually refers to the Encyclopedia Brown creator, Donald Sobol!) In addition, watch for references to books that are mentioned, but never named.  I figured one out this morning as I was sitting down to blog, as a matter of fact.

These are fun to share and I started reading aloud as soon as we got into the car to drive home. This book is also important because it tells us about some of the other people who live in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, which is interesting since we have only met a few residents in the other books so far.  Will these people play a part in the larger mystery that Snicket is working on? We will have to wait and see!

HINT: Read the stories.  Read the solutions.  Then read the solutions again. I’m just sayin’.

 

Breadcrumbs/The Real Boy by Anne Ursu

 Here are two very different books by the same author, presented for your consideration. They are similar and yet not at all, and I am still trying to decide if I liked one of them. Let’s investigate…

I had read about The Real Boy before it even hit bookstores and I was intrigued, especially by the cover art. I read this article about how the cover evolved and I knew I had to read it right away. When I went to purchase it, I also ended up buying another book by Anne Ursu, Breadcrumbs, and I actually ended up reading that one first.

Breadcrumbs is twist on the fairy tale story of the Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, in which a boy is hit with a shard of glass from a terrible, magical mirror that makes everything he sees look ugly and hideous. Breadcrumbs takes place in a modern setting, with two best friends, Hazel and Jack as neighbors and best friends.  Jack is the mirror’s victim in this version, and he suddenly stops hanging out with Hazel at home and at school.  Hazel’s mother tries to explain that perhaps they have just reached an age where boys and girls don’t play together anymore and relationships tend to be awkward, but Hazel knows that there is something else wrong. When Jack vanishes into the woods, she decides to go after him because she has read too many books to let Jack’s strange disappearance go without investigation. Hazel enters into a new world, marked by a clearing that features a ticking clock, and embarks on a classic journey to find and free Jack. This world is wholly magical and wonderful to read, and I loved how Hazel knows how to negotiate through this world, something that imaginative kids do quite naturally. Of course her quest is to free Jack from the Snow Queen, but will that be enough? This is a powerful story about growing up and I highly recommend it.

Then I read The Real Boy, and I will be honest and tell you that it took me much longer to finish than I had anticipated. It is also a story about magic, but I had to work a lot harder at this one. Oscar is the main character, working for one of the land’s last magicians. He has a gift for working with plants and herbs, but he is very aware of how different he is from the other people in his town, preferring to work behind the scenes and befriending a score of cats who live in the workshop.  At one time, the land was seething with magic, but it seems to be dwindling and the children of the city are becoming ill. When the magician’s apprentice is mysteriously (and gruesomely) killed, and other awful things happen, Oscar and his very kind and patient friend Callie begin to search for the truth. There were a couple of gasp-out-loud moments as I read this story, as it has a very twisty plot. It is also beautifully written, as is Breadcrumbs. I found this magical world to be much more chaotic though, and it left me feeling unsettled at the end. The magic felt ominous, or maybe I was supposed to experience Oscar’s point of view of not fully fitting in with the world around him. (In that case, it worked!) The story I really wanted to know more about was the history that Oscar and Callie spent so much time researching. Perhaps that tale will show up as a prequel one day!

Naturally read these books if you like magic and fairy tales and friendship. Read Breadcrumbs for sure if you’ve ever grown apart from a best friend because Ursu absolutely nails what that particular sense of loneliness feels like, and then you can read it and not feel so alone. And that, kids, is why we read.  Enjoy!

Breadcrumbs has an AR level of 4.8 and is worth 9 points. The Real Boy has an AR level of  4.9 and is worth 10 points.

Throwback Thursday (and a book pairing bonus!)

My goodness, I’ve been away for too long!  This is due to two things:

1.  I took 43 sixth graders to camp for a week.  A loooong week.  Totally worth it, by the way.

2.  I’ve been in a serious reading slump lately.  Everyone once in a while it happens.  I get distracted and have trouble settling in for reading.  I got stuck in a book that I was not really enjoying, but I really wanted to like it and thought I should like it, so I was too stubborn to just quit.  Then I had an assignment for a friend’s site that also involved my reading another book I did not care for at all and then figuring out how to write about it.  (That was really tricky, but I did it!)

One of the side effects of a reading slump is that I tend to bounce around between different reading materials, so suddenly I found myself finishing several things at once.  That’s good for this blog, so I’ll try to post a few more things in the next week or so.

Today I have two titles to present.  One is a throwback, since Throwback Thursday is such a big “thing” right now, and the other is a comparatively newer book. We are looking at 1987 and 2006, so I guess those are both technically throwbacks.  At any rate, the first is a classic and the second was new to me, and they both go together quite nicely.

My students just finished reading Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.  This is the story of a boy named Brian who is dealing with his parents’ fresh divorce.  He is off to visit his father for the summer, traveling in a small plane to Canada, by himself.  The pilot is friendly and lets Brian try flying the plane for a few minutes.  Not too far into the flight, the pilot suffers a fatal heart attack and Brian has to take over the controls.  He crash lands into a lake, but manages to drag himself ashore.  When he wakes up, his situation is dire.  It is just Brian, and the hatchet he wears on his belt, against the wilderness.  The story is full of triumphs and disasters as Brian has to figure out basic survival skills like acquiring food, constructing a shelter, and making fire.  He struggles and we hold our breath to see what might happen to him next.  Will he get rescued? What will happen when the weather changes? Are people even still looking for him???  Phew!

My students BEGGED me to keep reading and were sad when we would have to stop each day and switch subjects.  That is the sign of a high interest, captivating book! Hatchet has an AR level of 5.7 and is worth 7 points.  There is a movie as well, but it is called A Cry in the Wild.  (Beware of the horror movie series called “Hatchet.”  It’s definitely not the same thing!)

Now, while we were reading Hatchet as a class, I was also reading a book called Alabama Moon for silent reading time.  Alabama Moon was written by Watt Key, and also has a movie to match. Moon is a boy who has been raised to live off the grid since he was a baby.  The mother passed away when Moon was very young, so his father raised him in the woods.  Moon is an experienced survivalist, and his father has made sure to teach him how to read and write as well.  When Moon’s father breaks his leg, he refuses outside help and he dies, leaving 10-year old Moon all alone.  Moon is turned in to the authorities and spends some time in a juvenile detention center, where he makes his first friends ever.  After a daring escape, Moon goes on the run with an angry and bumbling sheriff on his tail.  This book was a great to read along with Hatchet and I found myself marking passages to read aloud and share with my class.  Brian was completely clueless and had to learn how to survive, where Moon was the exact opposite.  There is a part where he kills a deer and manages to use every part for something, right down to the eyeballs.  It was fascinating! It’s not hard to imagine being Brian once you read about Moon’s level of experience and reinforces Brian’s struggle.  (I would definitely be Brian in a survival scenario, how about you?)  Alabama Moon has an AR level of 4.1 and is worth 11 points.

Read either, or both, of these books if you love a great adventure story!  Don’t be tricked into thinking that these are “boy books” even though the main characters are boys.  Personally I love Hatchet because of its simplicity and how gripping it is, even though it has virtually no dialogue since Brian is by himself most of the time.  Alabama Moon, on the other hand, was much more about friendship and connecting with others.  These two make great companion titles, and each author has additional books to check out, too.  Read on!

Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

How can THIS

even BE a book?

my son asked.

It is, I said.

Just read it.

It is the story of a boy named Jack,

who thinks poetry is not for him.

Not for him, because his brain is

empty.

His teacher though,

she knows better.  You know,

like teachers do.

Over the course of the year,

Jack becomes inspired and

influenced.  He reads,

he understands,

he writes.

He gets it.

Love That Dog is a teeny tiny book that reminds us of the power of well-chosen words.  More is not always better.  My students often ask, as they sit down to write, “How much do I need to write?”  And I always say, “You write until you’re done.  No more, no less.”  This is why I like poetry.  It forces the writer to choose very carefully what to include, what to leave out, and how to compress an idea into a few, powerful words.  Sharon Creech is kind enough to include some of the “master” poems that are referenced in the story, so we can see how our character, Jack, has been influenced and inspired along the way.  As he writes and his confidence grows , he changes from a student who doesn’t not even want to post his name on his papers, into a student who extends himself and makes something awesome happen for his school.

I read this book in about 20 minutes.  It was fantastic.  It is still making me think about poetry today and how I want to go about teaching my upcoming poetry unit in language arts.  For a book so small, Love That Dog is incredibly sticky.  It will be awhile before I can get this one unstuck from my brain!  Love That Dog has an AR level of 4.5 and is worth 1 point.

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

Two posts on the same day! Go me!

Here’s a book that I just finished.  Like, 15 minutes ago just finished, and I though I’d better blog it right NOW while I’m already here!

The House of the Scorpion is a dystopian future-style book, though you don’t get the full impact of how strange the world has become until late in the book.  You get to go through the plot alongside the main character, learning as he learns, which led me to gasp out loud and make I’m sure what were ridiculous faces as I read this in class.  (My students think it’s funny when I read because I cannot keep my reactions to myself.)

This is a very twisty sci-fi novel about..well, it’s about a lot of things.  It’s about a boy, Matt, who is the clone of a man called El Patron, a terrible and powerful drug dealer in a country called Opium that runs along the border of the US and Mexico.  Matt has been grown in order to be spare parts for El Patron as he ages and become sickly.  Matt is actually the 9th clone in a long line of clones, and his time is running short.  Clones are considered no more than livestock, so he is treated poorly and has few rights.  Luckily El Patron favors him, so he is allowed an education and other privileges.  There is a dark undercurrent to this book, which made it super intriguing to read.  I knew things had taken a turn when Matt found himself in an “orphanage” where one of the mottos was “work is freedom” which sent chills down my spine.  “Work is freedom’ is a saying posted at many of the Nazi concentration camps during WWII and I remembered it immediately from going to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. last year.  There is a sequel to this book that I now *must* read.  I’m curious to know if Matt can overcome his own DNA or if he will give in to a history that is his by default.  Will he become what he must be destined for, or will he rise above his fate?  An interesting note from the author at the end expresses some of the moral issues that the book touches on, too. So good.

The House of the Scorpion has an AR level of 5.1, though I think it reads higher due to its science fiction characteristics, where you just have to press forward and trust that what you need to know will be explained to you in time.  Because it is complex, it is worth 15 AR points, an indication that you’re looking at a heavy plot.  Read this if you are a fan of other dystopian series like The Hunger Games, Divergent, or The Giver.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Happy new year! Did you meet your reading goal for 2013? Did you set a new goal to challenge yourself in 2014?  I missed my goal by just 3 books, but will challenge myself to fit in 5 extra books this year.  I use the website Shelfari.com to track the books that I read, and it’s pretty neat because it shows all of your reading statistics for each year.  For example I can see that my numbers were lower when I was back in school, that they went up sharply after graduation, and that I fell short last year.  It also helps me keep track of the books that I plan to read, and planning to read is almost as fun as the actual reading!

At the very, very end of 2013 I discovered my Book of the Year.  This book is a little higher than a “middle reader” book, though it is considered a level 6.5 in AR.  I would say this is more of a “young adult” book, towards the 8th grade and up end of things, but I wanted to note it here because it is so amazing.  Add it to your own TBR (to be read) list for when you have learned more about World War II.

Code Name Verity is a story of two girls who become friends while they are both working for Britain’s Royal Air Force.  One is a pilot and one is a radio/communication specialist and both are more than they seem.  The book is told by both characters after the girls are separated during a mission they undertake together.  Their story is complicated, sometimes graphic, and definitely surprising.  It’s a spy thriller, a mystery, an action/adventure book, and a book of deep love and friendship.  I can’t tell much more than this for fear of spoiling anything.  There is some technical information about various types of airplanes of the era that I found interesting, but I know others found dry and difficult.  When you get deeper into the story, you understand better why those details were included, but you don’t need to let them drag you down.  Just keep reading!

I read this book in 2 days over winter break, opting to stay in my pajamas ALL day because I was so involved in the story.  It was that good and I didn’t want to stop reading just to get dressed so I could continue reading.  That didn’t make sense to me!  Teachers like to enjoy their vacations, too, so I made sure that I got one full and complete day that was just for me.

Code Name Verity has an AR level of 6.5 and is worth 15 points.  The point value gives an indication that this book will have a complicated plot, and it does require some basic knowledge about WWII, though it will also explain some things along the way.  It is very dense reading, and not a book that you will be able to read casually, so be prepared to dedicate the necessary time and care to this title.  It does have a sequel, Rose Under Fire, that came out in 2013, but I haven’t read that one…yet.

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

Sophronia Temminnick is a tomboy living in Victorian England in the 1850s, a time when young ladies are expected to dress appropriately, learn to be a proper hostess, always be fashionable, have excellent manners, and associate with the correct people in order to land themselves a fine husband.  Long story short, Sophronia does not exactly fit in, and when she is recruited to a finishing school for girls, her mother is all too happy to ship her out with no questions asked, in the hopes that someone will finally be able to tame her spirit and make her presentable in society.

Little do they realize that Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality is not exactly what it seems.  The setting is an alternate England all together anyway, where vampires and werewolves lead normal lives alongside everyone else, so the idea that this school is held in a giant airship (or blimp, if you can imagine that better) and that the main focus of the instruction is about teaching the young ladies how to be spies, makes complete sense.  Also of note are the household mechanicals, or robot servants, so suspend your reality and wish that someday you might have a mechanimal pet dog, too! This book is an introduction into the world of steampunk, where the old-fashioned and the futuristic overlap, leaving the possibilities endless as to what kinds of technologies are available (and have yet to be invented!)

So, in this story, Sophronia goes off to school and immediately becomes entangled in some intrigue when her carriage is robbed by some “flywaymen” who attack from the air, and who are looking to steal a prototype of….something.  We don’t know what yet, but Sophronia makes it her mission to find out.  She meets the other girls at school, makes friends and enemies, takes classes from both a werewolf and a vampire, learns to dance and how to faint on cue as a distraction method, and befriends the crew of young lads who work under the airship as “sooties”, shoveling coal into the boilers to keep the whole school aloft.  Naturally she gets into some fair amount of trouble along the way.

Etiquette and Espionage is the first book in the Finishing School series, so it has a lot of set-up and a fairly simple plot to get things moving along.  I picked up book two, Curtsies and Conspiracies, at ComicCon this year and I’m hoping to read that one before winter break is through.  I love getting lost in this world that Gail Carriger has created, a mashup of everything I love– fantasy, mystery, adventure, a strong and smart heroine, a smidge of science fiction, and the writing is so witty, especially the dialogue. So clever, I wish I’d thought of it myself!  Here is the website if you’d like to learn more:

http://finishingschoolbooks.com/

Etiquette and Espionage has an AR level of 5.5 and is worth 11 points.

Movies!

I’ve been to the movies three times in three weeks.  That’s like a world’s record for me! Here is what I saw:

Ender’s Game

Ender’s Game made an okay movie.  If you have not read the book, you will find it to be entertaining, though you may have some questions about it afterward.  I read the book, but my son, husband, dad, and nephew did not know anything about it when they went to see it.  My husband found parts of it to be unbelievable.  My son said it was “meh.” (Teenagers!)  My dad thought it was pretty good, but I think he was relieved to see a more mature kids’ movie for a change, instead of the usual animated things he takes the grandkids to watch. My nephew, a fifth grader, seemed unsure about it, and I think this was his first real journey into a middle-grade level movie.  

I’ll say that what they DID include in the movie was fine.  I mean, we had to know the movie would be much more shallow than the book, that’s a given.  A lot of things were changed, starting with making Ender much older, which softens some of the violence in the story (and allows them to make a movie with a rating that lets kids actually see it.)  It is hard to tell how much time has passed in the movie though, and you can’t really understand that the book takes place over years of time and be able to realize how much they have manipulated and messed with Ender’s mind.  Ender’s brother and sister have been basically eliminated from the movie, but they try to replace those relationships with other characters.  With the actual characters gone though, a big piece of the plot is also gone, but I guess that works out okay because of the compressed timeline.  The book is much more political, but again that wouldn’t really keep the interest of the younger kids that the movie makers need to have in the audience.  It’s definitely a book that is hard to adapt for a film.

So, the verdict is, go read the book.  And then read some of the following books, because Ender’s Game was really just the set-up for the second book, Speaker of the Dead.  It’s a difficult read and it’s complicated, and it’s definitely not for everyone.  I’ve handed it to students only for them to pass it right back to me and say “Thanks but no thanks.”  Science fiction can be tricky because you have to be okay with not knowing what is happening until the author needs you to know more.

Thor 2: Dark World

This was great fun! I liked it better than the first one, and I’m not normally into superhero movies. I  preferred seeing Thor in his own world this time. Having him be lost and confused on Earth in the first movie did not work for me, so I’m glad he got to be a smarter character in this one.  Loki was fantastic and Thor’s mom gets a quick chance to show off her crazy skills, too.  At any rate, it’s not really a movie that you’re supposed to think about too much, so just go see it and enjoy! 

Catching Fire

So good that I didn’t even get upset with the cliffhanger ending! I read The Hunger Games when it first came out and before it was a “thing”, so I’ve been following these books for a long time.  This movie was really well done, and I particularly liked the pacing of how it played out.  It stayed in each setting long enough for you to gather the needed information and then it switched up again.  The images were very impactful.  Remember that in the book, the first part is Katniss and Peeta on their Victory Tour, then it’s the  Quarter Quell, they get swept off immediately for more training time, and the part about the games is pretty short.  The pacing was really important to make the movie feel balanced and still have a lot of action in it to keep it moving.  

The main thing I wished we had been able to see from the books would have been the videos of Haymitch in his Quarter Quell games.  His own story is only hinted at, but it explains so much about his character. I’m hoping that maybe some of those scenes will pop up on the DVD later.  If this same team is going to be responsible for Mockingjay, too, I’ll be very happy!

Next up…

The Book Thief

I read this book when it first came out, too, and it was my favorite book of that year.  The writing is beautiful and it looks like the movie will do it justice. I hope to see it this week while on vacation for Thanksgiving.  Part of me wonders if I have time to read it again, but maybe it is better to not confuse the two versions in my head. Has anyone seen this so yet? 

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck by Jeff Kinney

I started reading this book in class the other day and it literally made me LOL during silent reading. (Bad example, Mrs. P!) These books are always so funny, and they are written so precisely that they aren’t just throw-away funny, they are truly funny-funny.  I love the movies, too!

In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck (that’s book #8 for those of you keeping track), Greg and Rowley have grown apart.  Rowley, of all people, has gotten himself a girlfriend! Greg finds himself pushed out of the friendship and is left to figure out what to do with himself.  His family is still their wacky selves, and he makes several discoveries around the house since he is spending so much time at home.  First, he finds a Magic 8 Ball fortune-teller under Roderick’s bed.  He begins using it to make all of the decisions he needs to face, though it’s not exactly accurate or reliable.  Secondly, while hiding from his chores in his parents’ closet (based on advice he got from the Magic 8 Ball), he finds a pile of parenting books and realizes his mom has been studying child psychology and using it on him all of these years!  He finds some other odd things in that closet, too, which leads to the funniest part of the whole book when he decides to take it to school.  I won’t say what it is, but the illustrations cracked me up!  This story also brings in Greg’s extended family as they get together for Easter and leads to a hunt for Grandma’s diamond ring that she may have hidden in the backyard before she died.

Now, I wanted to feel for Greg and how he struggles with losing Rowley as his sidekick.  I’m a middle school teacher, and I see groups of friends shifting as the year goes along, not to mention this whole dating thing starting up, and it can really pull the rug out from underneath a person!  I separated from the girls I had known and been friends with for-ev-er when I was in sixth grade, and we grew apart. It was time to regroup.  It happens.  So I did recognize that in Greg as he wanders around the lunchroom trying to figure out where to sit, or hangs out at the find-a-friend station on the playground, unsure of what to do with himself.  And then he decides that now would be a great time to get Fregley on his side, so he goes off to pursue that friendship.

It doesn’t go well, and it really brings to light how much Greg uses everyone around him.  He chooses his friends based on what they can do for HIM.  Since Rowley would carry Greg’s backpack home, Greg plans to get Fregley to do the same.  Greg wants to mold Fregley into a new person for his own personal benefit.  And when you start to think about it, he’s been doing the same to Rowley all these years!

This has been bothering me all week.  I’m not sure why.  I hope Greg learned from this lesson. It’s hard to tell with middle school boys.  So while I laughed and laughed while reading, the book did not sit well with me in the end. Because Rowley is out of the picture, and Roderick is barely mentioned, this book feels more like a series of smaller stories stuck together.  I do hope there will be a book #9, just because I need to know that Greg finally “got it” and changed his attitude as he evolved.

Read this if you’ve read all the others, of course!  Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck has an AR level of 5.5 and is worth 3 points.

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

Wanna see something cool?  Watch this.

Think about social studies.  What is the number one thing people need to live?  Stable food supply, right. And what is the number one thing they need to establish that stable food supply? Water.  It’s kind of a big deal. Did you know that the Earth is over 70% water, but less than 1% of that is available to us as drinking water?  Most of us have it pretty easy in that we can turn on our sinks and get water like it’s magic.  Or we can go to the store and just buy a bottle of water, no problem.  We are very lucky.  The video above is just one example of how people struggle to collect water, each and every day.  The book I just read, A Long Walk to Water, is another example of what life is like in another country.

A Long Walk to Water tells the stories of two children from Sudan: Salva, whose story starts in 1985, and Nya, who is a child in 2008.  The book goes back and forth between their stories, but it is not confusing to read.  Nya spends her days walking to and from the pond to collect fresh water for her family.  It takes two hours to get there, and longer to get back because she must carry the heavy water back to her home. She does this twice a day, every day.  She cannot attend school and her family depends on her to complete this task.  Salva’s family is fairly well-off in their village, compared to others, and he does get to attend school.  However, Sudan is in the middle of a civil war* and one afternoon the fighting comes to Salva’s village.  The teacher tells all of the boys to start running, just start running away so they don’t get caught up in the crossfire.  Salva is separated from his family and joins a large group of people who set out walking towards a refugee camp that will hopefully take them all in.  It is very dangerous to walk across the desert, having to face lions and crocodiles, not to mention the threat of soldiers at any time. The adults in the group are reluctant to help Salva because it is not safe to invest energy and resources into someone who could hold them back.  

*A civil war is when a country is fighting with itself, and the people are divided against each other.  Here in America, we often refer to The Civil War, which took place in the 1860s between the northern and southern states.

Meanwhile, Nya notices some activity going on her village.  Strangers have appeared and they seem very busy.  They bring in a large drill and say they will find water and build a well, but the people of the village do not understand how this is possible.  They are very skeptical about this new situation, and life continues on as usual, with Nya making the long walk to water every day.  In his sections of the book, Salva continues to face many challenges.  He becomes a leader of a group of boys, who became known as The Lost Boys of Sudan.  They walk and walk and walk.  For years.  YEARS.

Eventually the two timelines catch up to each other, and you will be truly humbled by these stories.  Salva’s story is true; Nya’s character is fictional, but based in fact.  She is what we call an amalgam, or a combination character based on many different sources.  I remembered the story of The Lost Boys of Sudan from the news, so I sort of knew how this story would end, and it still moved me to tears.  The book tells a tale of a life that we can barely imagine from the comfort of our homes where water flows freely, our toilets flush, and our refrigerators are stocked with fresh food.  This is why we read, and this is why we travel– to open our eyes to different possibilities, to be thankful for what we have, and to help those in need when we can.

Salva is now an adult, and here is a link to his project if you’d like to know more about what he has accomplished: http://www.waterforsouthsudan.org/

A Long Walk to Water has an AR level of 5.0 and is worth 3 points.