Title: Walk Two Moons
Author: Sharon Creech
Publisher: Scholastic
Release Date: May 1994
Length: 280 pages
Series?: no
Genre: Children’s
“How about a story? Spin us a yarn.”
Instantly, Phoebe Winterbottom came to mind. “I could tell you an extensively strange story,” I warned.
“Oh, good!” Gram said. “Delicious!”
And that is how I happened to tell them about Phoebe, her disappearing mother, and the lunatic.
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.
In her own award-winning style, 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.
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This book is a tough one. It is the required novel for my sixth grade students. The book has a large focus on grief and death, as well as relationships and judging others. There is also strong representation of nature, mothers, and trips. The overarching theme (and also a guiding line from the book) is “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins.”
The story follows coming-of-age kiddo Salmanca Tree Hiddle as she travels on a roadtrip with her (maternal) grandparents to find her mother. [The grandparents already know where mom is and what happened.] Throughout the trip there are some events that happen at certain points along the way, and Sal spends the time telling her grandparents about all of the things that have happened recently since she and her dad moved to Ohio. Everything revolves around her crazy friend Phoebe or another mysterious neighbor that her father has taken a liking to. The ironic element about Sal is that she never realizes how her life parallels Phoebe’s life and how they are very alike in so, so many ways.
I think I enjoyed the secondary characters and their story arcs more than Sal and her story arc.
Girl of 1000 Wonders 
I honestly can never remember whether I’ve actually read this book or just had it around my house growing up and assume I MUST have read it. So interesting to see a review because I don’t see it mentioned much online!
I think it is a little bit outdated at this point. It took some time to warm up to as well.