Linda Sue Park

"My natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and its going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way?"

"The first day in the desert felt like the longest day Salva had ever lived through. The sun was relentless and eternal: …show more content. Even breathing became an effort: Every breath Salva took seemed to drain strength rather than restore it."

"Stands of stunted trees. There was little to eat: a few fruits here and there, always either unripe or worm-rotten. Salva’s peanuts were gone by the end of the third day. After about a week, they were joined by more people—another group of Dinka and several members of a tribe called the Jur-chol. Men and women, boys and girls, old and young, walking, walking. . . . Walking to nowhere. Salva had never been so hungry. He stumbled along, somehow moving one foot ahead of the other, not noticing the ground he walked on or the forest around him or the light in the sky. Nothing was real except his hunger, once a hollow in his stomach but now a deep buzzing pain in every part of him. Usually he walked among the Dinka, but today, shuffling along in a daze, he found he had fallen a little behind. Walking next to him was a young man from the Jur-chol. Salva didn’t"

"I think stories are forever…[But] the way we get stories has changed. This might be an ostrich-in-the-sand kind of thing, but I still see my job as producing the best story I possibly can."

"I want all my books to provoke some kind of response in the reader, to make them think something or feel something or both, and for that to become a part of them and work into their own lives. So I do not expect readers to march off to Africa and start doing good works. But maybe one reader will think about Salva when they’re going through their own tough time. Or maybe another reader will think, well, I can’t go off to Africa and drill wells but I can make my corner of the world a tiny bit better. So different people will hopefully get different things. But I think that his story can transcend so many boundaries, cultural and time, and especially because it’s all written around water. You can’t get more of a human universal than water."

"know much about him, except that his name was Buksa. As they walked along, Buksa slowed down. Salva wondered sluggishly if they shouldn’t try to keep up a bit better. Just then Buksa stopped walking. Salva stopped, too. But he was too weak and hungry to ask why they were standing still. Buksa cocked his head and furrowed his brow, listening. They stood motionless for several moments. Salva could hear the noise of the rest of the group ahead of them, a few faint voices, birds calling somewhere in the trees. . . . He strained his ears. What was it? Jet planes? Bombs? Was the gunfire getting closer, instead of farther away? Salva’s fear began to grow until it was even stronger than his hunger. Then— “Ah.” A slow smile spread over Buksa’s face. “There. You hear?” Salva frowned and shook his head."