No More Happy Families?

Newspaper columnist Hal Piper wrote an article in the April 21, 1995, Chicago Tribune entitled “Are the Plots of Kids’ Books Too Realistic?”  He questioned School Library Journal’s praise for the book's “humor and suspense,” wondering why someone would be “in the mood for humor about a mother’s death.”

He claimed this was the “new realism in children’s books,” in spite of the subgenre’s dating back to 1964's Harriet the Spy.  He disapproved of “giving awards for books about hellish childhood nightmares instead of blissful childhood idylls” and blamed “sophisticated New York editors and jaded librarians bored with 'Doctor Doolittle,' 'Rabbit Hill' and 'Johnny Tremain.'”  He thought at the time there was an overemphasis on problems in books for children, and argued that “a surfeit of anguish is no better than a surfeit of sunshine."

Native American Stereotypes

On her blog, “American Indians in Children’s Literature,” Debbie Reese, of the Nambe Pueblo Tribe in Northern New Mexico (2010) has criticized the portrayal of Native American culture in Walk Two Moons. Reese objects to the author’s romantic view of Native Americans and holds that it perpetuates stereotypes and misinformation.  “She’s an outsider to Native culture, trying to write a story as if she’s an insider,” Reese says of Creech. “But her story is based on outsider’s writings, and outsider’s understandings, and it doesn’t work.”

Reese cites Creech’s Newbery Acceptance Speech, in which Creech said:

As a child…. I inhaled Indian myths…. [and] crept through the woods near our house, reenacting those myths, and wishing, wishing, for a pair of soft leather moccasins.  (I admit—but without apology—that my view of American Indians was a romantic one.)

Creech’s treatment of Native Americans in Walk Two Moons did not include negative stereotypes, but was in some ways imprecise. Reese's main objections seem to be to Creech's sources and idealization, combined with her outsider status. The phrase “without apology” seems, understandably, to have rankled.

Although I loved the novel, I consider Reese’s perspective relevant, and hope her efforts at consciousness raising result in future writers taking more care to steer clear of oversimplified representations of Native Americans.

Comment from a Student Forced by a Teacher to Write a Letter to Sharon Creech About Walk Two Moons

"If I were given a choice between reading this book again, and cleaning my teeth with sulphuric acid, I would choose the acid. 

In recounting this experience, Sharon Creech admitted that "you could receive 100 letters and 99% of them might be glowing. But if one is sort of mean, you will remember the mean one."  (2014, Cotsen Children's Library BiblioFiles Interview.)