Walk Two Moons- Review

It started out as an english assignment, my reading of "Walk Two Moons". However, I soon became obsessively addicted to the book, and finished two days later. There were many reasons I was drawn into this book, but I mainly loved it because of how it was so masterfully written, and how, while reading, I realized how closely my life compared to Sal's.

The story is one of a young girl, Sal, who travels with her grandparents to see her mother, who left her and her father some years ago. On the long trip, Sal's grandparents request a story, and Sal decides to tell them of her life after her mother left, after they had moved away to her previous home. The unique way the author wrote the story was outstanding. As Sal tells her story to her grandparents, the reader feels as if he/she is with them on the trip, listening to every word, bawling to every sorrow, and jumping for joy in every scene of happiness. Occasionally, throughout the book, the story is interrupted as Sal's grandparents comment on their feeilngs at the moment. Whatever they say, the reader finds him/herself completely agreeing. It is as if Creech wrote the novel, knowing exactly how to make the reader feel the way she wanted. There was one point in the climax of the story, where, again, it is interrupted by a commentary conversation between Sal and her grandparents. Annoyed, the reader would trudge along to find, in joy, that the grandmother insisted on the continuation of the story. I felt a deep connection with Sal and her grandparents while reading the novel because Sharon Creech wrote in such a way that the reader never felt left out, that the reader always felt included in the story.

Sal's life was filled with sorrow at first. She found herself wrenched from her farm home, which she adored, to a city house, with only a small patch of grass in the front. One can only imagine how the young girl, so attached with nature and her surroundings, felt when she was stripped of the willow trees, the singing larks, the sweet aroma of flowers, and the beautiful meadows. Life was good and life was perfect, making a perfect opportunity for something to creep in and ruin eveyrthing. In her new school, her class studies mythology, and Sal is required to give a report on Pandora's Box. If you don't already know, Pandora's Box was filled with all the evil and darkness of the world. There was only one good thing, and that was hope. Sal ponders:

"That night I kept thinking about Pandora's box. I wondered why someone would put a good thing such as Hope in a box with sickness and kidnapping and murder. It was fortunate that it was there, though. If not, people would have the birds of sadness nesting in their hair all the time, because of nuclear wars and the greenhouse effect and bombs and stabbings and lunatics. There must have been another box with all the good things in it, like sunshine and love and trees and all that. Who had the good fortune to open that one, and was there one bad thing down there in the bottom of the good box? Maybe it was Worry. Even when everything seems fine and good, I worry that something will go wrong and change everything."

At this point in the story, I felt the deepest connection between me and Sal. My life was once exactly as hers was. I always had the fear AND hope of being happy, having joy. If my life got too perfect, something would always come along and ruin it.

In conclusion, I loved this book, because of the deep understanding I shared with Sal, and because of the way the novel was written. Sal tells the story as a means of reflecting on it and coming to accept it, and that is what I have to do. You cannot change what life has given you, but you can change what you do with it.