Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Walk Two Moons is a book about Salamanca Tree Hiddle, also known as Sal, who travels across the country with her grandparents to Idaho to find her mother. This travelogue describes Sal’s adventures, as well as memories of the time she spent with her mother before she abandoned Sal and her father while on vacation. At the end of the novel, we discover the truth about Sal’s mother, and follow Sal as she discovers who she is as a person within her own culture. Sal’s mother is Native American (although they prefer the term Indian) and Sal recalls different cultural traditions that her mother would uphold in her childhood. In Sal’s journey, she also discovers more about this culture and learns how to adopt it into her own life.

This book is written as a first person narrative travelogue. The travel narrative could make for interesting activities if students were to map out Sal’s journey. I also liked that in addition to Sal’s story, we also get to know Phoebe Winterbottom, Sal’s friend with an interesting life. The text is easy to read, so I would mark it at a sixth grade reading level.

While the book is excellently written and has won a Newberry award, Sharon Creech is not Native American. I expected this book to have more culturally rich detail, however, there is certainly a gap between the author’s experiences with Native Americans and the reality of Native American assimilated culture. While I would recommend this book for a good read, I do not think it is multicultural enough for students to understand something about Native American culture.