Author | Sharon Creech |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Young adult fiction, adventure, realistic fiction |
Publication date | June 12, 1994 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
Pages | 185 pp (first edition, hardback) |
ISBN | 0-06-023334-6 |
LC Class | PZ7.C8615 Wal 1994 |
Walk Two Moons is a novel written by Sharon Creech, published by HarperCollins in 1994 and winner of the 1995 Newbery Medal. [1] The novel was originally intended as a follow-up to Creech's previous novel Absolutely Normal Chaos ; but, the idea was changed after she began writing it. The book is often taught in elementary and middle schools across the world since the book is considered a classic example of what it means to judge, come to terms with loss, and connecting with the people who surround us. [2]
Plot The novel is narrated by a 13-year-old girl named Salamanca Hiddle. She and her grandparents are from Bybanks, Kentucky, a fictional town based on Quincy, Kentucky, but they are currently renting a house in Euclid, Ohio. Sal's mother has recently left Sal's father, and Sal's grandparents are taking her on a cross-country road trip to Lewiston, Idaho to see her mother. Sal loves nature and was very close to her mother before she left. On the trip, Sal entertains her grandparents by telling a story about her friend in Euclid, Ohio, Phoebe Winterbottom, whose mother suddenly disappeared and left their family too, and about Ben Finney, with whom Sal begins a romantic relationship. Throughout the book, as Sal's story unfolds and their car travels west, she reveals more details about Phoebe, and why her story reminds Salamanca of her own. The more she tells her grandparents of Phoebe's story, the more she feels like her story is less connected to Phoebe's story. When Sal reaches the Missouri River, her grandmother, or referred to as Gram, is bitten by a Cottonmouth snake. Sal reaches Coeur d'Alene while Gram suffers a stroke and has to stay in a hospital. Gramps wants to stay with Gram, but having already taught Sal to drive on their farm, he gives her the car keys so she can reach her mother in Lewiston. After a tense four-hour drive along a winding road, Sal reaches Lewiston and visits her mother’s grave, finally coming to terms with her mother’s death in a bus crash over a year ago. When she gets back, it is revealed that Gram has died. At the end of the novel, Sal and her family move back to Bybanks and Sal mentions that their friends from Euclid are planning a visit.
The major themes in the story include the development of new relationships, dealing with grief, love, death, [3] cultural identity, [4] women's roles as mothers and wives, [5] the hardships of life, and the adventures of misunderstandings and coming to terms with reality. Creech drew on her background for many of the book's themes and images, including Sal's love of nature, her relationship with her mother, and the road trip to Idaho that frames the narrative. [6] In an interview, Creech said that she found the aphorism that gives the book its title ("Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins") in a fortune cookie. [2] [7]
Sharon Creech is not indigenous, though she claims a vague, Native heritage. Indigenous Americans have expressed disappointment in the stereotypical and romanticized depiction of Native Americans in Walk Two Moons. Debbie Reese on Creech's authority to write about Indigenous Americans: "She's an outsider to Native culture, trying to write a story as if she's an insider. But her story is based on outsider's writings, and outsider's understandings, and it doesn't work... the Indian content doesn't really matter. It is simply a device, or, a decoration on a story about a young girl coming to terms with life and death." [8]
Creech on her indigenous heritage and inspiration: "My cousins maintain that one of our ancestors was an American Indian. As a child, I loved that notion, and often exaggerated it by telling people that I was a full-blooded Indian. I inhaled Indian myths... I crept through the woods near our house, reenacting these myths, and wishing, wishing, for a pair of soft leather moccasins. (I admit --but without apology--that my view of American Indians was a romantic one.)" [8]
In 1995, Walk Two Moons won the Newbery Medal, the United Kingdom Reading Association Award, and the United Kingdom's Children's Book Award. In 1996, it received the WH Smith Mind-Boggling Book Award. In 1997, it also won the Literaturhaus Award, Austria, and the Young Adult Sequoyah Award. [2]
Caddie Woodlawn is a children's historical fiction novel by Carol Ryrie Brink that received the Newbery Medal in 1936 and a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958. The original 1935 edition was illustrated by Newbery-award-winning author and illustrator Kate Seredy. Macmillan released a later edition in 1973, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.
Susan Eloise Hinton is an American writer best known for her young-adult novels (YA) set in Oklahoma, especially The Outsiders (1967), which she wrote during high school. Hinton is credited with introducing the YA genre.
Cynthia Rylant is an American author and librarian. She has written more than 100 children's books, including works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Several of her books have won awards, including her novel Missing May, which won the 1993 Newbery Medal, and A Fine White Dust, which was a 1987 Newbery Honor book. Two of her books are Caldecott Honor Books.
Jean Carolyn Craighead George was an American writer of more than one hundred books for children and young adults, including the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves and Newbery runner-up My Side of the Mountain. Common themes in George's works are the environment and the natural world. Beside children's fiction, she wrote at least two guides to cooking with wild foods and one autobiography published 30 years before her death, Journey Inward.
Sarah, Plain and Tall is a children's book written by Patricia MacLachlan and the winner of the 1986 Newbery Medal, the 1986 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and the 1986 Golden Kite Award. It explores themes of loneliness, abandonment, and coping with change.
Sharon Creech is an American writer of children's novels. She was the first American winner of the Carnegie Medal for British children's books and the first person to win both the American Newbery Medal and the British Carnegie.
Chasing Redbird is a book by Sharon Creech published in 1997. The book centers on Zinnia Taylor. Zinny sometimes mentions her friend Sal, which is a reference to Salamanca Hiddle, the protagonist of the 1995 Newbery Medal-winning Walk Two Moons.
The View from Saturday is a children's novel by E. L. Konigsburg, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 1996. It won the 1997 Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature, the author's second Medal.
Absolutely Normal Chaos is a children's or young-adult novel by Sharon Creech, published in the U.K. by Macmillan Children's Books in 1990. It was the American author's first book for children, completed at the midpoint of nearly two decades living in England and Switzerland. Although set in her hometown Euclid, Ohio, it was not published in her native country until 1995 (HarperCollins), after she won the annual Newbery Medal recognizing Walk Two Moons as the preceding year's best American children's book.
Lois Lenore Lenski Covey was a Newbery Medal-winning author and illustrator of picture books and children's literature. Beginning in 1927 with her first books, Skipping Village and Jack Horner's Pie: A Book of Nursery Rhymes, Lenski published 98 books, including several posthumously. Her work includes children's picture books and illustrated chapter books, songbooks, poetry, short stories, her 1972 autobiography, Journey into Childhood, and essays about books and children's literature. Her best-known bodies of work include the "Mr. Small" series of picture books (1934–62); her "Historical" series of novels, including the Newbery Honor-winning titles Phebe Fairchild: Her Book (1936) and Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison (1941); and her "Regional" series, including Newbery Medal-winning Strawberry Girl (1945) and Children's Book Award-winning Judy's Journey (1947).
Dicey's Song is a novel by Cynthia Voigt. It won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1983.
Ruby Holler (2002) is a low fantasy novel for children by the American writer Sharon Creech, published by HarperCollins in 2002. It features adolescent orphan twins who are "trouble" and an eccentric older couple who adopt them and take them back to live in "magical" Ruby Holler (hollow).
The Graveyard Book is a young adult novel written by the English author Neil Gaiman, simultaneously published in Britain and America in 2008. The Graveyard Book traces the story of the boy Nobody "Bod" Owens, who is adopted and reared by the supernatural occupants of a graveyard after his family is brutally murdered.
The Wanderer is a children's novel by Sharon Creech, published in 2000. It was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and named a Newbery Honor book.
The Underneath is a children's book by Kathi Appelt. It tells the story of an abandoned cat who goes to live with a maltreated hound dog underneath a crooked old house in a bayou on the border between Louisiana and Texas. Published in 2008, The Underneath is a John Newbery Honor book, ALA Notable Children's Book and a National Book Award Finalist.
When You Reach Me is a Newbery Medal-winning science fiction and mystery novel by Rebecca Stead, published in 2009. It takes place on the Upper West Side of New York during 1978 and 1979 and follows a sixth-grade girl named Miranda Sinclair. After Miranda finds a strange note, which is unsigned and addressed only to "M," in her school library book, a mystery is set into motion—one which Miranda ultimately must face alone. At the same time, Miranda juggles school, relationships with her peers, and helping her mom prepare for an upcoming appearance on The $20,000 Pyramid, a popular game show hosted by Dick Clark. Important characters in the story include Miranda's mother; Richard, her mom's good-natured boyfriend; Sal, Miranda's childhood best friend; and a homeless man who lives on Miranda's block and is referred to only as "the laughing man." Central themes in the novel include independence, redemption, and friendship.
Show Way is a 2005 children's picture book by American author Jacqueline Woodson with illustrations by Hudson Talbott. The book was made into a film in 2012 by Weston Woods Studios, Inc., narrated by the author. It recounts the stories of seven generations of African-Americans and is based on the author's own family history. Show Way was a John Newbery Medal Honor Book in 2006 and was featured in Reading Rainbow that same year in the series finale.
Pictures of Hollis Woods is a 2002 young adult novel by Patricia Reilly Giff. The novel received a Newbery Honor Award in 2003. It was adapted for television in 2007.
Kelly Barnhill is an American author of children's literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Her novel The Girl Who Drank the Moon was awarded the 2017 Newbery Medal. Kirkus Reviews named When Women Were Dragons one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2022.
Chickadee is a 2012 historical fiction novel by American author Louise Erdrich, the fourth book in The Birchbark House series. Moving the story fourteen years into the future, the novel follows Omakaya's twin sons, Chickadee and Makoons, as the family moves further into the Great Plains. When Chickadee is kidnapped, he embarks on a journey to reunite with his family against a backdrop of American westward expansion.