Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
About Sharon Creech
Sharon Creech was born on July 29, 1945, just outside of Cleveland, Ohio. She grew up in a Cleveland suburb, amidst a rambunctious, story-telling family. After getting a Master’s Degree from George Mason University, she lived for a time in Washington D.C., where she married and had two children. In 1979, following a divorce, she packed up her now-elementary-school-aged children and moved with them to Surrey, England, where she taught English at an American school. There, she met and married Lyle Rigg, who was the new assistant headmaster. She spent fifteen years teaching in England and Switzerland, before returning permanently to the U.S. She now lives with her husband in Maine.
Towards the end of his life, Creech’s father had a stroke which made it impossible for him to speak. The idea of having one’s words all bottled up inside inspired Creech to begin to write in earnest, and after producing two novels for adults, she published the YA novel Absolutely Normal Chaos, which came out in England in 1991, and was based in large part on her own childhood summers. Walk Two Moons (1994), her first novel published in the U.S., contains a cameo appearance of the family featured in Absolutely Normal Chaos.
"How Do You Get Your Ideas?"
This is the question children ask her the most often. According to Allen Raymond (1996), “When she begins a new book, Sharon has no outline, and little idea where the writing will take her. 'When I explain this to children,' she said, 'I tell them they don’t have to know the story before they begin writing. All they need is a character, and a location.'” (Raymond cites Creech, 1995, Horn Book Magazine.)
How She Met Her Husband
Lyle Rigg, Sharon's husband, wrote "We met on our first day in England, when Sharon borrowed some ice--that rare commodity in Europe--from me. Three years later, we celebrated our wedding party on a riverboat floating down the Thames" (1995).
When Sharon CreechWon the Newbery Medal
"I think I kept asking...'Are you kidding?'... You might think I would be deliriously excited--and I was--but I was also terrified, because I didn't know what to expect next." (2004, Ohio Reading Road Trip website.)
"I still go weak when I think of that call coming so unexpectedly, jolting my world so intensely. My first reaction was disbelief, followed by overwhelming gratitude. I felt as if the eye of God had beamed down on me, and I'd better do everything I was told." (Creech, 1995, Newbery Acceptance, Horn Book Magazine)
A List of Her Books
Absolutely Normal Chaos
Bloomability
The Boy on the Porch
The Castle Corona
Chasing Redbird
Grannytorrelli Makes Soup
The Great Unexpected
Hate that Cat
Heartbeat
Love That Dog
Pleasing
Replay
Ruby Holler
The Unfinished Angel
Walk Two Moons
The Wanderer
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