Walk Two Moons

Title: Walk Two Moons
Author: Sharon Creech
Publisher: HarperTeen (December 23, 2003)
Genre: Chapter Book
Readability Lexile: Grades 3-6
Summary and Target Audience:
Sal is a young girl living with her grandparents.  She entertains them with a story about Phoebe Winterbottom and in the telling of this strange story she learns about herself as well as explores the world of those around her.  Desperate to be reunited with her Mother this story is funny, heartwarming, sad, lonely and everything in between. She experiences all that makes life sweet including learning about her own grandparents and their life together.  This story is one of my favorites!  The audience for this book could be anyone from Grade 2 and beyond, but mainly targeted at young women because the main character is a young girl.

Evaluation of the Text:

Good story-  This story ranks on my top 10 books in my library.  I rediscovered it when I was in High school and do a yearly reading of Walk Two Moons and Chasing redbird (although Walk Two Moons is still my favorite).  What makes this story amazing is the transformation of the main character, Sal.  She begins telling this story that the reader is not quite sure of the validity of, and learns about herself through the process.  She recognizes her strengths and weaknesses and learns all about love of family and loss in one book.

Did I feel as though I was there- The author Sharon Creech does such a spectacular job of using descriptive language.  When I read the book for the first time I was lost in Sal's world.  It is one of those stories where you loose track of time and space and you are so utterly involved that you become Sal in the story and experience everything with her.

What is the author trying to tell me-  There are too many themes and messages to go over in a short blog like this, but I will focus on one which is my favorite. Sal learns to "Take a walk in someone else's shoes," before she judges or thinks negatively of them.  She learns this from her mother who Sal is madly trying to find and discover why she is no longer with Sal.

Literary Elements: 

Conflict- The largest conflict in this story would be the finding of self.  Sal is trying to discover where her mother is but in her search of finding her mother she is really learning about herself.  Is she a lost country girl?  Or can she become a woman of the world?  Is she like her Grandma?  Will she learn to love like her Gram and Grandpa do?  What is the meaning of the Phoebe story to Sal?

Symbolism- The symbolism in this story is intense.  While Sal is accompanying her grandparents on a 6 day travel to retrace her mothers steps in Idaho.  The symbolism of this trip is the grieving process that Sal goes through- from denial, to anger to finally acceptance of where and how her mother has gone.  The symbolism of the story of Phoebe may also be a part of this, but it is up to the reader to decode the second story within the story.  The grieving process is also mirrored through the relationship of her grandparents who are entering old age.

Situational Irony- There's a tone of different situations that become ironic in this story.  One of my favorites is just the full name of Sal- Salamanca Tree Hiddle.  She struggles with this name as she knows it was meaningful to her mother whom she is desperately trying to reconnect with.  The story takes place on the trip to Idaho which is fun to imagine in of itself- two grandparents and their grandchild on an adventure that even leads them to a Pow-wow.

Mini-lesson:
I struggled with coming up with an idea for a mini-lesson for this story.  I had never thought of applying it to the classroom before.  I do like the idea of a story within a story and relating the two stories together to intertwine and I remember trying to practice writing a story within a story in Elementary School.  For the upper elementary grades this would be a great story to work on the skill of story within a story especially in a small group of students who are either below grade level or above.