Walk Two Moons

Creech, Sharon. Walk Two Moons. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1994

Walk Two Moons is a novel about a young girl named Salamanca Tree Hiddle whose mother unexpectedly leaves their family and moves to Lewiston, Idaho. The story alternates between Sal’s journey with her grandparents to visit her mother, and her retelling to them of her life after moving with her father to a new town. The story builds with the intrigue of not knowing why Sal’s mother left and if Sal can ultimately convince her to come back, and with the mysterious incidents that Sal and her friend Phoebe run into and try to investigate.

Walk Two Moons does a lot of great things that make it excellent for middle school students to read. For instance, it incorporates vocabulary learning into the text; one of the characters looks up the word “malinger” in the dictionary after she tries to get out of going to school, and then Mr. Birkway (the English teacher) uses it in class later in the book. It also talks about Sal’s Native American heritage and modern Native American issues of politics and identity. Sal and her mother have opinions on the difference between “injun” “Indian” and “Native American,” and Sal meets a Native American who, when asked if he was Native American responds, “No. I’m a person” (73). The main themes of the novel - identity and displacement - are great for students to read about and discuss. The story also contains subplots about developing your first crush, fitting in at a new school after a move, and realizing and comparing your family’s lifestyle, dynamic, and values with other families – all of which are relatable to many students.   I think it could be read at any grade level in middle school.