Walk Two Moons is the story of Salamanca Tree Hiddle, called Sal, and her quirky friend Phoebe Winterbottom.  As Sal tells Phoebe's story on a cross-country trip with her grandparents, Sal's own story unfolds with all of its complexity and emotion. 

 

Love That Dog is the story of Jack, a boy who comes to tell his own story through poetry and a dog named Sky.  This novel is written in verse and is easy and enjoyable to read.  Jack struggles through poetry with his teacher, Miss Stretchberry, who is committed to helping her students understand poetry and write their own.  When Jack discovers a poem by Walter Dean Myers, he comes to a new understanding about poetry and about himself.

 

 

Walk Two Moons and Love That Dog are two very different novels by Sharon Creech yet they both demonstrate her skill as a writer and her appeal to children  Both incorporate humor and enjoyable characters, however different they may be in style and language. 

 

Lowery-Moore noted that eccentricity and depth are often characteristic of Creech's characters (Lowery-Moore 2001).  Walk Two Moons is peppered with vibrant people, from funny Gramps to the eccentric and quirky Phoebe Winterbottom.  The characters in Love That Dog are not as developed as those in Walk Two Moons, however they are no less enjoyable and humorous.

 

Creech's plots are often layered, and Walk Two Moons is no exception.  One reviewer noted that Creech's stories often have a "parallel story;" one that offers views of characters in various situations(Lowery-Moore 2001).  In Walk Two Moons, for example, the reader is taken along with Sal on a cross-country trip with her grandparents, yet the story often flashes back to scenes of her life in Bybanks with her mother and father, and to her life in Ohio -- mostly dramatized by stories of Sal and her friend Phoebe.  The three lives of Sal give the reader a true understanding of her life, and offer different perspectives on her character as a whole, revealing her feelings about herself and the life around her. 

 

Love That Dog is a very different novel from Walk Two Moons yet the main character, Jack, is struggling for identity in a similar way to Sal, who is searching for her own identity without her mother in her life.  Jack struggles to understand poetry and why it is important.  He progresses through the novel by writing more and experimenting more with poetry until, by the end of the  novel, he finds his voice (Anstiss 2002).  Jack's voice is influenced heavily by the poet Walter Dean Myers, who becomes a character in this book.  Jack copies the style of Myers in a poem he writes about something he truly loves, his dog Sky.  Though Jack's character is not fully developed, he is developed enough for the reader to enjoy and understand his plight.  Young reader's will enjoy the shortness of the novel and the humor with which it is written. 

 

Creech has said about her own writing that she prefers to spend her time writing with "people who are quirky and kind" (Lowery-Moore 2001).  The kindness and eccentricities of all of Creech's characters does define her work as a whole.  She has a way of combining the sad with the humorous - making the reader think about life but not weighing them down.  Creech said, "This comes out of who I am.  I cannot dwell too long in the serious before lightening the mood with humor"  (Lowery-Moore 2001). 

 

This sentiment is true in all of Sharon Creech's work.  Her novels have a way of combining the subtle humor of everyday life with the things and events that seem to overpower us as people, such as sadness, loneliness, death, and evil.  In the end, at least in Creech's work, hope and love and even quirky friendships prevail over all of the struggles, pain and mystery in life.   Her books are written with honesty and a sincere hope that humor will lighten one's load along the way.