Walk Two Moons​ by Sharon Creech

Review

This Newberry Medal winning young adult novel is told through the eyes of

the endearing protagonist, Salamanca Tree Hiddle, while she is on a road trip with

her grandparents to find her mother and bring her home. We quickly learn a lot

about Sal and her friends, who are developed through flashbacks; Sal tells her

grandparents stories of events in her life while driving. These events focus on Sal’s

wildly imaginative friend “Phoebe Winterbottom, her disappearing mother, and a

lunatic.” The adult characters who litter the story are revealed less quickly and we

understand them much less as we only see them through the eyes of thirteen year

old Sal or the ultra suspicious Phoebe. The reader’s understanding parallels Sal’s;

we question her father’s friend Margaret Cadaver because of her last name, but our

feelings toward Margaret change as Sal looks back at the events, matures into her

own new understanding, and certain aspects of the mystery we didn’t realize was

there are revealed. Readers, especially young girls, will quickly relate to Sal, wishing

to have her life, surrounded by such intriguing characters (Grandpa Hiddle refers to

his wife as his “gooseberry”), beautiful places (when Sal describes her father moving

them from the farm, she says “he did not bring the chestnut tree, the willow, the

maple, the hayloft, or the swimming hole…), and general sweet goodness (she

describes her first kiss as tasting like blackberries). Creech is a master at creating a

fantastic reality; this story can and does happen to everyone, she just puts it in a

light that makes it seem so much better than ours.

 The frame tale style of storytelling helps to move the plot along quickly by

pairing a long, repetitive journey with short bursts of Phoebe’s mysteries and

adventures. Young readers will again parallel Sal’s feelings in terms of the story

itself; at first, the stories seem like separate entities, meant only to help pass the

time on the trip, but as Sal matures, she begins to see that all the seemingly

disconnected events actually combine with the road trip to tell her own story. The

physical journey of the drive parallels her mental journey from childhood toward

adulthood; each day brings her closer to the heartbreaking adult realization

foreshadowed constantly and finally reached in the last pages.

The writing style is simple and straightforward because of the narration by a

thirteen year old, so it is not extremely challenging. The story and characters should

appeal to young readers anywhere in the 10-15 age range; at the younger end of

that, the book may be slightly challenging, while at the older end, it may be very

simple, depending on the ability level of the reader. A strong reader may look

afterward or instead to ​To Kill a Mockingbird​ or another such bildungsroman novel

for more of a challenge but with a similar episodic story arch about characters on

both a literal and figurative journey.