Book Review-Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

This is a fiction book written by Sharon Creech. It was an interesting book, and seemed to show different experiences for the characters. The audience could be anyone in my opinion. My stance is that the book was excellent. I think that young adults and older would appreciate it much more because it deals with a lot of learning about yourself.
The title itself is like a metaphor. You could say that you walk along in the night and look up at your own moon, but someone else could be doing the same thing, so in a way it’s like walking “two moons” instead of one. There is a road trip that one of the main characters Sal takes in the book. During the trip, she discovers a lot about herself and has more of an understanding about others too. She is upset about not knowing about her mother’s death, and has to figure out how to find peace with it.
Sal and a very high-strung girl named Phoebe become friends after Sal moves to Ohio where Mrs. Cadaver lives. Mrs. Cadaver becomes friends with Sal’s dad after her mother disappears. Later on, Phoebe’s mother disappears also after losing a child from going into early labor. Time goes on, and Phoebe’s family is very upset because the sergeant’s son, whom everyone thinks is crazy, leaves letters on the porch. They reference “walking in another man’s moccasins”. This means that you shouldn’t judge someone else, until you have had an experience similar to theirs.
Sal later discovers that Mrs. Cadaver suffered a great loss a few years back, when a car accidentally killed her husband and blinded her mother. She ends up understanding Mrs. Cadaver better and realizes that she isn’t as scary as she thought.
The story was very intriguing to me. I was interested in learning about where the letters were coming from, about Sal’s mother dying, Phoebe and her mother’s disappearance, and that the lunatic ends up being her brother. The characters are well developed and very believable. Sal is believable because she is portrayed as being brave, despite the fact that Sal herself doesn’t think she is. She picked up a spider with her hands, and drove down a windy, steep road in the middle of the night trying to find her mom.
Sal’s grandmother uses verbal gestures and has a lot of expression. She makes experiences in Sal’s life memorable. There was a time when her grandmother took her to an Indian museum, and ended up smoking a pipe together, which was part of the Indian traditions. This was important to Sal because it left a positive memory for her. After her grandmother passes, she is able to have closure with her mother dying also.
I have memories of my great-grandmother Petersen, which came back to me after reading this book. She died when I was about 5 years old. I remember a quilt that she made for me, and movies she’d put in the VCR for me to watch.
I felt like Sal was able to look beyond her own issues and find an understanding about other people in her life. She put aside her own resentment towards Mrs. Cadaver and learned to empathize about her. In conclusion, I would recommend this book because of the interest that it held for me. I would read each chapter, and slowly began to understand the way the stories of Sal and Phoebe came together. Each story was intriguing to me. It led you to want to keep reading.