Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Bibliography
Creech, S. (1994). Walk two moons. New York: HarperCollins.

280 Pages

Plot
Salmanca is a young girl trying to understand why her mother left her and her father. Moving from Kentucky to Ohio, Sal is trying to come to terms with her father’s grieving and her own need to adapt in a new environment. Sal becomes friends with a young girl named Phoebe. Despite this, Sal is still struggling to understand why her mother left. To help her, Sal’s grandparents decided to drive with her to Idaho to visit Sal’s mother. Along the way, Sal begins to tell her grandparents the story about Phoebe and the lunatic. Through the story, is Sal’s realization of her life, that of her family and the people around her.

Review
Walk Two Moons is a complex novel. Creech’s ability to interweave various stories and subplots is very well done. The book is narrated by Salmanca, Sal for short, a thirteen year old trying to come to terms with her life. Creech does an excellent job showing the trials and tribulations of being a tween coupled with multifaceted emotions and events that provide the reader with interesting characterizations of Sal and the people around her. Especially moving is the relationship between Sal’s grandparents, who offer comic relief and provide impetus both to Sal’s story about Phoebe and her search for her mother.

Genre
Contemporary Realistic Fiction

Reading Level/Interest Level
This book is interesting, based upon the themes I would recommend this book to readers in 5 – 7th grade.

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Personal thoughts
I really want to like Walk Two Moons. This is the second time I’ve read it, the first being in an undergraduate Children’s Literature class. Having experienced life and loss a bit more, I found the second reading to be more moving than when I first read the book. Nevertheless, something about it just does not quite grab me. It’s funny, I love the writing style, but I wonder if it just wanders too much for me in the middle. At the same time, I think the novel needs to have a wandering middle so that we better understand the characters in the novel and Salmanca’s own growth. So ultimately I’m torn, I understand why this book is considered a classic, but I can’t find myself really liking it. Nevertheless, I wanted to include this book within the digital records assignment. It is a book that has remained popular and has been used for required reading in school.

Subjects/themes
Family Life
Grieving
Death
Road Trip
Growing Up
Depression

Awards
The Newbery Medal, USA, 1995
United Kingdom Reading Association Award, 1995
Children's Book Award, United Kingdom, 1995
Literaturhaus Award, Austria, 1997
Young Adult Sequoyah Award, Okla., USA, 1997

Series information
Walk Two Moons is not a book from a series; however, Sharon Creech’s novels do interrelate. Her book Absolutely Normal Chaos does include some of the characters from Walk Two Moons as does Chasing Redbird.

Character names/descriptions
Salmanca “Sal” Hiddle: The 13-year old narrator is coping life as she and her grandparents drive cross country to visit her mother.

Gramps and Gram: Sal’s grandparents on her father’s side, both are driving her from Ohio to Idaho to visit her mother.

Phoebe: Sal’s friend in Ohio, who also suffers from feelings of loss and abandonment.

Annotation
Walk Two Moons is Sal’s journey of growth; that she must walk in another person’s shoes in order to understand them. But how can she understand her mother leaving?