March 6, 2006: Death and Dying in Children's Literature: Walk Two Moons

It's apparent that children's authors are not afraid of tackling the hard

issues young people and old alike have to deal with . We all have lost or will

lose someone we love. Children will face the death of young schoolmates. Some

will face the death of parents and grandparents -- perhaps even siblings. It's

somewhat ironic, but also appropriate, that  two of the  Newbery books

I read this weekend, in the first anniversary week of my own mother's death last

year on March 2, were about the death of a parent and a grandparent. As I tried

to list these books before reading them, I had to draw on the summaries by the

Library of Congress or the back cover of the books for an idea of the plot. And

it strikes me how those summaries tell a story in a couple of sentences so

matter-of-factly and convey little of the potential impact on the reader. They

are but skeletons of a book's contents, whereas the books themselves take

readers beyond themselves into someone else's mind, heart, and emotions.

On Sunday I read Sharon

Creech's Walk Two Moons, a winner of the Newbery Medal. From the title

alone I expected an Indian theme, and if you read the book you will see why I

didn't say Native American. But Indian ancestry of the main character, Sal, is

only incidental, and not where the title comes from.  In this book, we

enter into the lives of Sal, Phoebe, their families, and their way of thinking.

Three characters in the book at some point, do not live with their mothers.

Sal's mother is dead, but it is only implied until the end. Phoebe's mother is

seems to be an unappreciated supermom, who does everything right, but leaves

home for a while in the middle of the book with notes to all about the food in

the freezer she's left and other instructions, but no way to contact her. She

will call in about a week. Next door to Phoebe lives Mrs. Cadaver, whose husband

is dead, and who is the reason Sal and her dad had to move to this little box

house with almost no land  -- away from the house in Bybanks, Kentucky by

the Ohio River, with her maple, willow, and chestnut trees, the barn, hayloft,

and swimming hole. Sal fears her father's interest in Margaret Cadaver as

betrayal of her mother. Phoebe is convinced that Mrs. Cadaver killed her husband

and cut him into pieces and buried him in the backyard. Phoebe is also convinced

that a lunatic is after her household when a young man comes to the door wanting

her mother, who wasn't home, and left no message when he could not see her. Then

the strange notes started arriving on Phoebe's doorstep -- left by the lunatic,

of course. All these facts about Phoebe come out as Sal tells her story to her

grandparents on a trip to Lewiston, Idaho -- the trip her mother took when she

left them. They are taking Sal to find her mother.

I forgot Ben. He lives with his cousin Mary Lou, all of her siblings, and her

parents. Their household is what you'd call rambunctious --lots of wild activity

and rather loose discipline. Sal wonders why Ben doesn't live with his own

mother, but she later learns his mother is in a mental hospital -- the same day

Phoebe and Sal have tracked the lunatic (whose identity Sal had discovered) to

his university. Phoebe is convinced he has kidnapped her mother. But when they

find the "lunatic" they both feel sick. He is sitting on a bench on the grounds,

and he is kissing Phoebe's mother. (This is not exactly what it appears to be,

and the reason comes later that evening, when Phoebe's mother comes home.)

One thing a reader will really enter into is the fertile imagination

possessed by thirteen-year-old girls. Another theme is the denial felt when one

loses a loved one. Both Sal's father and Mrs. Cadaver try to explain to Sal

about their relationship, but Sal is so sure she knows what it is, she won't

listen. Finally, the night Phoebe's mother comes home, right before the trip,

Mrs. Cadaver finally makes her listen. Sal has already discovered from her

teacher, who turns out to be Mrs. Cadaver's brother, that Mr. Cadaver died in a

tragic automobile accident and that Mrs. Cadaver was the nurse on duty in the

emergency room when her husband was brought in, along with Mrs. Cadaver's

mother, who was blinded in the accident. By the time Sal has driven 100 miles on

the  terrifying curvy road from Coeur d'Alene to the top of Lewiston Hill, 

the highway on which her mother's bus had crashed, and seen its broken remains,

jagged metal, and the holes through which rescuers had removed the victims, she

already knows that only one person had survived -- Mrs. Cadaver, who had been

sitting next to her mother. By this time she also is found by the sheriff, who

sees her trying to find a way into the bus to see if anything of her mother's is

there. She explains she is driving because her grandmother had a stroke just

before they got to Coeur d'Alene and her grandparents are at the hospital . She

tells the sheriff she learned to drive on her grandfather's farm, and  when

he knew he needed to stay with his wife in  Coeur d'Alene, he  given

Sal the car keys with the subtle message to get anything she needed because he

know how badly Sal wanted to be in Lewiston the next day -- her mother's

birthday.  The sheriff took her the rest of the way to her mother's grave,

and the deputy drove grandfather's car.  As Sal gazed on  her mother's

final resting place, she was finally able to accept the fact that her mother was

not coming back. And when she and grandfather's car were driven back to the

hospital, Gramps told her Gram had died early that morning. They do some

grieving together.

Although my description might make the book seem depressing, it really

wasn't. There were touches of humor throughout, and lots of signs of growing up

as the girls realized how much of what they had thought when they had jumped to

conclusions wasn't true. At the end, Sal and her Dad are back at the farm in

Bybanks, and Gramps is with them. And Sal is constantly thinking about what it

might be like to walk two moons in other's moccasins. She's also working through

her grief issues. All in all, I'd call the book moving, not depressing. It's a

great book for families or classes to read together and discuss.

There's lots in the book there's not room to comment on here, but one episode

deals with the schoolteacher's reading of student journals aloud -- changing the

names of course. I think that part has something important to say to teachers.

©2006, Barbara Radisavljevic

Death and Dying in Children's Literature,Part 2

 Click here to

respond