Book Talk on Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Description of Book: A young girl named Sal retraces her mother’s last route with her grandparents while telling the story of her friend Phoebe. Sal’s mother left home suddenly and Sal’s dad moved the two of them from their country home to a cookie cutter house with not even enough grass for one cow. Sal’s story of her friend Phoebe shows many hidden life lessons, along with what the power of imagination looks like. Sal also tells several other stories about her time at their country home to give herself a background.

Why I chose this text: I chose this text because it was a great connection book to me when I first read it back in middle school. It helps with students who may be going through personal stuff at home and is inspiring by the use of conversational storytelling and imagination.

Rationale: I would use this book in a classroom because it has a great storyline for each character and would be a great book for teaching the basics of rise of events to climax and then the fall to the resolution. Also, this would be a great tool to have students foreshadow and make predictions on their own of what might happen.

Who is the text appropriate for and why: This text would be appropriate for 6^th through 9^th or 10^th grade. It is a smaller book with a lower lexile, so I would not recommend it for higher grades. It is a very conversational book which will appeal better to middle school or early high school to get away from the academic language used in classes.

How this book could be used in a classroom, teaching ideas: This book could be used to go over a basic format of a storyline with the rise, climax, fall, and resolution. It follows the pattern nicely because of the road trip and the events that occur while on the road trip. This would also be a great book to promote writing short stories, free-writes, or even a narrative essay on a personal event. Also, this would be a great book to teach vocabulary like pathos, ethos, logos, and different strategies or stylistic approaches the author uses within the book.

Obstacles/issues using this text: The only issue I could see would be the discussion of infant death because of the incident with the new baby’s birth, and the discussion of death at the end of the book when we find out that the Mother actually died in a bus accident. Also, the text is very basic and simple which works perfect with the conversational style of the language. Some students may not be as into it because of the simplistic and ‘easy’ nature of the language. Another reason why this would be for grades 6^th-8^th and maybe 9^th.

Administrator’s response to text: I do believe an administrator would approve of this text after going over a plan of how to approach the topic of how the baby died. Granted, it is not an over the top serious topic. Same would go for the topic of death.

Parent’s response to text: I cannot see the parents responding in a negative way to this text. If they did respond negatively it would most likely be on the topic of death in this book. If parents did have a problem with how I went over or talked about death when it comes up, then I will discuss it with them and if they still have a problem I will send them to my administrator.

Student’s response to text: I believe the students will respond positively to this book because of the style it is written in, and because it is not too old of a book either. It might relate to students more so because of the aspect of moving from country to city, losing a parent, making new friends, wild imaginations, or even the humor that is shown in this book.

Other comments on the text you should know: Again, this book is more meant for middle school to maybe 9^th grade students because of the conversational style of language and the fact that the main character is thirteen. On another note, it is a pretty great book.