Walk Two Moons (Trophy Newbery)

Description

In her own singularly beautiful style, Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech intricately weaves together two tales, one funny, one bittersweet, to create a heartwarming, compelling, and utterly moving story of love, loss, and the complexity of human emotion.

Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle, proud of her country roots and the “Indian-ness in her blood,” travels from Ohio to Idaho with her eccentric grandparents. Along the best way, she tells them of the story of Phoebe Winterbottom, who received mysterious messages, who met a “potential lunatic,” and whose mother disappeared.

As Sal entertains her grandparents with Phoebe’s outrageous story, her own story begins to unfold—the story of a thirteen-year-old girl whose only wish is to be reunited with her missing mother.

Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle’s mother has disappeared. At the same time as tracing her steps on a car go back and forth from Ohio to Idaho with her grandparents, Salamanca tells a story to pass the time about a friend named Phoebe Winterbottom whose mother vanished and who received secret messages after her disappearance. Certainly one of them read, “Do not pass judgement on a man until you’ve got walked two moons in his moccasins.” Regardless of her father’s warning that she is “fishing within the air,” Salamanca hopes to bring her home. By drawing strength from her Native American ancestry, she is in a position to face the truth about her mother. Walk Two Moons won the 1995 Newbery Medal.