#walk two moons

[walktwomoonz]

thinking about john hiddle & mr winterbottom while listening to snowman by sia. they shouldve been gay god damn it

[safaristylez]

does this book have a fandom if so can it like come out of the woodworks

[chainsawseesaw]

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

My rating: 5 of 5 stars If you've known me since I was a little girl you might know about my affinity for this book, because despite what my goodreads says this is actually my 4th reread of this absolutely gorgeous novel. This book was first read to me in 5th grade by my teacher at the time. I remember it all very clearly, about her talking about how the book had impacted her, and how the kids around me didn't pay enough attention. I was transfixed, and I'm pretty sure that out of my whole private school class, I was the one to lay my head down and cry during the ending.    That first reading really cemented what this book meant to me, and what it still means to me. I really don't think that if I had discovered it any other way that it would've made such an impact.    The second and third times I read this book, were both through audiobook. In fact I loved this book so much I begged my poor dad to buy me an audible subscription just so I could listen to Walk Two Moons over and over. I have a memory of being just a kid with bad insomnia and being unable to sleep, so I listened to the audiobook all night while sorting beads on the floor of my room. Salamanca's story the only thing to keep me company.    All that being said, and this being my only time actually reading and looking at the words of this book, and I couldn't be happier to be doing so. Reading the book is a very different but still wonderful experience. And sometimes when Grams says "Huzza Huzza" I can hear it in my head the exact same way the person reading the audiobook said it. This book is a wonderful exploration of themes of love and loss, for younger readers and older readers alike. And while I love this book to death, I dont recommend it for purely selfish reasons, I want it for myself. View all my reviews

[cleanerdoesntgaming]

sergeant bickle

[agmagazinescans]

Who's That Girl? Sharon Creech

American Girl Magazine, March/April 2001

[Ko-Fi Donations]

[rubypomegranates]

"You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair."

Sharon Creech "Walk Two Moons"

[elephantpipe]

There’s something so odd and so perfect about every sentence in this book. I don’t think I’d be the person I am today without first laying eyes on its contents. A book so full of love and even more full of longing and loss and peculiarity. If I drew my soul in 15 seconds, it would be a circle with a maple leaf inside.

[385bookreviews]

2.195 Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

SPOILERS

Pages: 280

Time Read: 3 hours

Overall Rating: 2.5★ Storyline: 3.5★ Dialogue: 2.5★ Characters: 3★

Genre: Middle Grade/YA Fiction

TWs for the book: Death of a parent, death of a grandparent, stillbirth, hysterectomy, medical trauma, grief, car accident, abandonment, death of a grandparent, racial slur, brief discussion of the psych ward, paranoia, blood, ableism, pregnancy; very mild discussion of hanging, murder, kidnapping, and torture

POV: First Person

Time Period/Location: The time period is not clear but it takes place mostly in Bybanks, Kentucky; Euclid, Ohio; and then a road trip from Euclid to Lewiston, Idaho

First Line: Gramps says that I am a country girl at heart, and that is true.

Salamanca, a 13 year old girl and our main character, lived on a farm with her mother and father in Bybanks, Kentucky. After the stillbirth of her sister and a subsequent hysterectomy due to bleeding, Sal's mother leaves to take a bus trip to Lewiston, Idaho to visit her cousin, see the sights, and to ultimately find herself. Sal and her father learn not long later that her mother was involved in a crash and died. Shortly after, Sal's father rented out their farm and moved them to Euclid, Ohio to be closer to her father's friend Mrs. Margaret Cadaver. While there, Sal befriends an anxious girl named Phoebe Winterbottom.

Sal didn't get to see her mother's grave whenever she died, so her Gram and Gramps, her father's parents, take her on a week long road trip to retrace Sugar's last steps and to arrive at her grave in Lewiston on her birthday. While on the drive, she entertains her grandparents with stories about Phoebe and her family. She notices that Phoebe has a lot of wild notions about things and naturally assumes the worst of people. Sal spends a lot of time at her house and notices that Phoebe, her older sister Prudence, and father Mr. Winterbottom, tend to take Mrs. Winterbottom for granted and ignore all of the effort she puts in to her cooking. Sal also learns where Phoebe gets all of her wild ideas from, as her mother is also exceedingly anxious and worried about robbers and "lunatics". One day, while Phoebe and Sal are home alone at Phoebe's house, a nervous young man knocks on the door and asks to see Mrs. Winterbottom. Phoebe says she isn't there. After he leaves, Phoebe starts imagining the young man as some kind of lunatic looking to harm them. The paranoia increases when mysterious blank envelopes begin appearing at their front door step, all with mysterious sayings such as, "Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins" and "In the course of a lifetime, what does it matter?".

Phoebe and Sal befriend Mary Lou and her cousin Ben, who lives with her. Ben flirts with Sal, much to her confusion. Phoebe shares with Sal her wild conspiracies about Mrs. Cadaver, and they only grow whenever they see their English teacher Mr. Burbanks at her house helping her to replant a bush. Phoebe tells Sal that Mrs. Cadaver used to be married, but she probably chopped up her husband and buried him under that bush, and Mr. Burbanks helped. Not long later, Mrs. Winterbottom leaves a note that she will be gone for awhile. Sal then has to watch Phoebe go through exactly what she did when her mother left. Phoebe assumes that her mother has been kidnapped, tortured, or murdered by "the lunatic" (the young man that knocked on the door) or Mrs. Cadaver. She puts tape around mysterious spots in the house and collects random hairs as evidence. Her father and sister and Sal all try to explain that her mother wrote notes and left them frozen meals for dinner so surely she wasn't kidnapped, but Phoebe isn't convinced. She goes to the police station, but they laugh at her and don't take her seriously. Her and Sal then break into Mrs. Cadaver's house, and Phoebe tries again to take evidence to the police, but is once again shut down. While there, Sal manages to see that "the lunatic" is the police sergeants' son. At school, Mr. Burbanks causes some drama amongst the students after reading their summer journals aloud to the class. He reads in Phoebe's that she suspects Mrs. Cadaver to be a murderer, so he stops by her house to speak to her and Sal and explain that Mrs. Cadaver is his twin sister, and that her husband died in a drunk driving accident that also blinded their mother, Mrs. Partridge. Sal continues to see herself in Phoebe as the mystery continues, and through some minor sleuthing, they find out where Mike, "the lunatic", lives. They travel by bus to his college, running into Ben on the way to the hospital. They are about to go up to Mike's room, but change their minds, only to see Phoebe's mother sitting with closely with him and giving him a peck on the cheek. Phoebe is angry, and Sal gets scared and runs, assuming Phoebe will follow but she doesn't. She goes to the hospital to find Ben and discovers he is visiting his mother in the psychiatric ward. They kiss for the first time. Phoebe is immensely angry at her mother, and refuses to tell her father what she saw. When they arrive back at her house though, her father informs her that her mother will be coming home and bringing someone to meet them. They prepare, and Mrs. Winterbottom comes home with Mike, and explains that he is her son that she had put up for adoption before she married Mr. Winterbottom. Mr. Winterbottom is distraught she kept this from him but is determined to be civil and make it work. Phoebe is still angry and leaves with Sal, and they find that the mysterious letters have been being left by Mrs. Partridge. Sal finally decides to speak to Mrs. Cadaver about how her and her father met, something Sal had been avoiding. She discovers that Mrs. Cadaver was on the bus sitting next to her mother for the whole trip when it crashed, and she was the only survivor. Her father had met her in Idaho when he was making burial arrangements, and moved him and Sal closer to her so he could have some connection to the last person who saw his wife alive.

During this whole story, Sal is in the car traveling with her Gram and Gramps to Idaho. They stop and see a lot of national monuments and sights. At one point though, while swimming in the river, her Gram is bit by a water moccasin. A boy who had been telling them to leave because it was private property helps to suck the venom out, and they take her to the hospital. She is weak afterwards, and has a cough. By the time they arrive in Idaho at midnight on Sal's mom's birthday, Gram is unconscious and they rush her to the hospital. They say she had a stroke. Gramps gives Sal the keys so she can drive herself to see her mother's grave. The four hour drive is on a dangerous and windy road, and Sal stops for a few breaks. At one of the stops along the side, a passing driver who is also stopped tells her that the bus her mother died in is down in the woods. She goes down and tries to get in it, but can't find a way in. When she comes back up, the police sheriff is there, wondering what she is doing. She explains everything that happened, and they take her and Gramps' car down to where her mother is buried. She is finally able to say goodbye properly and fully accept that her mother isn't coming back. The sheriff then drives her back to the hospital, where she finds a note saying that her Gram has died and that Gramps is back at the motel. They head back to Euclid. In the end, Sal and her father move back to their farm in Bybanks, and Gramps moves in with them. Gram is buried in the field and Mrs. Cadaver, Mrs. Partridge, Ben, and Phoebe all plan to visit them.

Storyline: This middle grade book has been sitting on my shelf since elementary school without me having picked it up. I finally did, and was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful, heart-wrenching narrative. Obviously the dialogue and characters are what you would expect of a middle grade book, but this story about grief and loss and the processing of those feelings was really well done.

Representation: Salamanca and her mother Sugar are described as being "American Indian". They also meet another "American Indian" man along their trip. I put that in quotes because there are multiple passages in the book criticizing the use of the term Native American. There is also the use of the a slur for Native Americans. Sharon Creech, the author, is not Native American herself, and has admitted to romanticizing Indigenous culture. The quote and article below was written by Dr. Debbie Reese, as I am not knowledgable enough or in the position to speak on this subject myself: "[Sharon Creech is] 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." https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2010/02/thoughts-on-sharon-creechs-walk-two.html

[hauntingjasper]

That was one of her favorite leggings bro

[front-facing-pokemon]

[fluxydrawings]

what if they were so silly. and danced together

[anxiouslowercase]

sas rh: let eoin survive the fall au » the astronomer philosopher, the earth and the moon

[cricketclan]

HOOO many babies. 5 more moons to go before i get caught up where i am in game. sooo close

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[aldercaps]

up next on illustrating my dreams: high school friend turns self into werewolf using underground fight club beserker ritual, you (werewolf by birth) come across him and are understandably horrified by this

[age-of-moonknight]

“The Killing of Moon Knight,” Vengeance of the Moon Knight (Vol. 2/2024), #9.

Writer: Jed MacKay; Penciler and Inker: Devmalya Pramanik; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

[heyteenbookshey]

I decided to restart this blog because I had gotten back into reading YA

But I tripped backwards and have read 6 middle grade novels in the past few weeks? Oh my god I'm loving it???? They are are so good?????? They are creative and use words efficiently and are so right for my attention span???????

If you're curious (because apparently I don't review books anymore) here's what I've read:

Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany Jackson (4/5 eeeee I didn't know middle grade could still go this intense!!!)

So B. It by Sarah Weeks (A classic for a reason, I love when books have ONE fantastical element like Heidi's luckiness 4/5)

Soof by Sarah Weeks (A So B. It sequel, kind of! This lacked the charm and heart of it's original, not impressed 2.5/5)

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech (I love Sharon Creech and hadn't read this yet! It was okay, I don't see why it's so widely read in schools but I am neither a middle school teacher or a middle schooler 3.5/5)

Bloomability by Sharon Creech (This was my favorite book in fifth grade! I was a drama drenched kid and searched "kidnapped" in the school library catalog and this came up, but the "kidnapping" was Dinnie's aunt and uncle taking her to an American boarding school in Switzerland and she has such fun adventures and grows so much 4.5/5)

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (500/5 WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW do you ever read something and get mad because you'll never write anything this good??)

Do you want to see full reviews of any of these? Reply if you do! I know it's not heymiddlegradehey but that's what's happening right now!