Reviews

• おもしろい

  小学生向けの本ということもありとても読みやすいです。話のテンポも良くて先に先に読みたくなります。おススメです。

• 絶賛オススメ

  母への恋慕という、多くの人の心をさらうテーマが一貫してありながら、そこに家族愛、夫婦愛、ティーンの友情、初恋などなど、人間ドラマが重層的に絡んでくる。過去と現在の時間軸が交互に並ぶことにやや戸惑いつつ読み始めたとしても、どちらの時間軸でもミステリ的な要素が後押ししてぐいぐい読める。そして最後に全てのピースがはまる。大人が十分楽しめる児童書だと思う。

• 泣けた

  初めて音声のものを買ってみた。 ナレーターってこんなに上手なのね、と感動。 おばあちゃんの声もおじいちゃんの声も、若い女の子の声もそれっぽい。 お話は、祖父母と一緒に車で、母に会いに行くサラマンカが、車中、祖父母に友達の フィービーのお母さんが家を出て行ってしまった話の顛末を聞かせるというもの。 サラマンカの母が出て行ってしまったときのサラマンカ自身の思いと、 フィービーの思いが合わさって、そして現在につながっていく。 途中、想像していなかった展開に、泣けて泣けて仕方なかった。 運転中だというのに。運転中に聞くのはよくないのかもしれない。 最後はきれいにまとまりすぎている気がちょっとしてしまったけど、 よいお話だった。

• ラストシーンで泣けました。

  インディアンの血を引く少女が祖父母と一緒に母親を探す旅と、 父と一緒に滞在した農場でのシーン。 素朴なアメリカの田舎の州の平凡なシーンに、最初は退屈して いたけど、途中で急激なストーリー展開があり、結果的には 楽しく読めました。 どこの国の女の子もファーストティーンエイジャーの頃は 背伸びしつつ、田舎のティーンエイジャーらしく素朴さも 残ってて、懐かしさも感じます。 主人公が母親との思い出を語るシーンを読みながら、 早く、母親に会えるといいねとおもいつつ読んで いきましたが、ラストシーンは･･･ 予想外の結末に泣けてしまいました。 ほとんど難しい構文や表現はありません。 時々、知らない単語が出てきますので、あまり語彙力の ない人（私のような）!が単語を調べながら読むには ちょうどいいレベルだと思います。 （ストーリーの流れを止めずにすむ量なので） 最初の出だしがつまらなかったのと、２つのシーンが 交差しているので、洋書に慣れていない人は、投げ出す かも知れません。なので星４つです。 最初を適当に読み飛ばしてしまうと、後は面白く 読めると思います。

• 子どもだけでなく大人が読んでも大丈夫です。

  レビューが良くて購入しました。大人が読んでも面白いです。英語が苦手な方にも軽く読めるレベルです。お勧めします。

• 静かで、悲しくて、暖かい

  ネイティブアメリカンの血を引く少女Salが、祖父母と共に遠方にいる母のもとへ向かう６日間の物語。 母の足跡を辿って観光地などを巡る旅が話の中心ですが、道中Salが祖父母に語る、友人Phobeの家庭で起こった事件がサイドストーリーとなっています。 初めはどうということのない日常話で、これがなぜNewbery賞受賞作なのか？と思ったのですが、終盤にいろんなことがひっくり返されます。 さらにSalの旅の意味が明らかになるクライマックスは、ぼろぼろ泣いてしまいました。 題名は作中繰り返し語られるフレーズ'Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccassins'から。 最後まで読むと、それが主人公に向けられた言葉でなく、読み手に向けられていたのだと理解できます。 聞き手である祖父母が、おおらかで何とも魅力的です。 英文はとても読みやすいです。

• やさしい英語です。

  他の方もおっしゃっているように、冒頭部分はどんな話なのかがつかみにくく、少し読み辛いと感じる方も多いと思います。しばらく読んでいくと、登場人物たちの魅力に気づき、どんどん話にひきこまれていきます。アメリカの自然の名所、先住民について、クラスメイトが抱えている家庭の問題、自分を置いて家をでてしまった母親のこと－ これらの複雑な事柄を、わかりやすい英語で丁寧に書き出しています。最後までじっくり読みました。本当にいい本です。是非大人の方も読んでみてください。

• 謎めいて、おかしくて、せつない、素敵な物語です。

  穏やかな雰囲気に包まれたお話ですが、交差していく、いくつものストーリーが調和して一つの深い物語となっています。 広いアメリカ大陸を自分も車で旅行している気分も味わいながら、母親失踪の深まる謎とその真相解明に引き込まれていきます。 主婦として母として生きる女性の心理の複雑さ、人を見た目や思い込みで判断する偏見の不確かさ、自分の物差しでしか物事を計れない愚かさ、そして愛についてなど、物語を通して色んなメッセージがあったように思います。数年前に本を購入して最近CDを購入して聞きながら読み直しました。CDもおすすめです。

• I almost gave it a single star, but...

  In few words, this had lots of potential to be a great novel, but it went to waste when the writer decided to focus on Phoebe, the most bland, annoying, uninteresting kind of character ever to be written. Phoebe is a spoiled brat that fails way too harshly into seeing her mother's struggle, which is okay and completely realistic, but it really got annoying when she started insisting on a kidnapping: the process of denial this kid went through was so unrealistic and forced it really made me feel like punching this character in the face multiple times... Actually, what I really found unreal was the fact no one punched Phoebe in the face, multiple times. Only reason I gave it three stars instead of one is because there are some real good passages among the eternally blandness of the narrative, such as the boy pretending he could read hands just so he could be able to hold Sal's hand.

• Mary Ellen

  El libro es una pasada. Altamente recomendable. It is beautiful story with important messages. Highly recommended. Muchas gracias un saludo

• We loved this book

  We loved this book. My 13 year old son loves how Sharon Creech weaves the same characters and places through many of her books.

• Hope prevails

  Salamanca "Sal" Tree Hiddle is telling a story to her Gram and Gramps. While on a road-trip trek from Ohio to Idaho, with the trees whispering for her to `hurry, rush, hurry' Sal is recounting the story of her friend, Phoebe Winterbottom and the lunatic who changed her life. But in the telling of Phoebe's tale, Sal is learning the truth of the old proverb: "Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins" . . . because Phoebe's story is entangled in Sal's own, and what happened when her mother left for the badlands. `Walk Two Moons' by Sharon Creech was first published in 1994, and won the Newbery Medal in 1995. It has since become an American children's classic, and for good reason. I read the last chapter of Sharon Creech's `Walk Two Moons' aboard the Number-57 tram. Lumbering towards Lonsdale Street I started to cry, and by the time I'd arrived at my North Melbourne destination I was attracting curious stares from my fellow commuters. This book wrecked me, in the best possible way. We meet Salamanca "Sal" Tree Hiddle shortly after her father has uprooted her from Bybanks, Kentucky and the last memories of her mother. Now they live in Euclid, Ohio next-door to Margaret Cadaver and her blind mother. But when the book begins Sal is at the beginning of a road-trip journey to Idaho with her Gram and Gramps. Something in the trees is compelling Sal to rush across the American heartland, to get to Idaho and her mother . . . but along the way Gram and Gramps want to be entertained. So Sal starts telling them a story. She tells them about her new life in Euclid, where she has befriended the prudish Phoebe Winterbottom, whose family is undergoing a change somewhat similar to the one Sal's little family went through not so long ago. Sal also talks about Ben Finney, who imagines a soul similar to her own and keeps trying to plant a kiss on Sal's lips. `Walk Two Moon's is a novel of beautiful equilibrium; at once terribly sad, and terribly funny. In recounting the story of Phoebe's lunatic, who brings her family crashing down, Sal paints a wonderful picture of her best friend; a young girl whose wild imagination is rivalled only by her snobbish temperance. Sal recounts Phoebe's story like a puzzle she's piecing together for her Gram and Gramps - explaining the cryptic messages that were first left on the Winterbottom porch, and then the various investigations Phoebe and Sal conducted searching for the lunatic. But Phoebe's story has a deeper meaning for Sal, who draws parallels between the Winterbottom's struggles and the events that led to her mother leaving Sal and her father behind to go on the very same Idaho road-trip Sal is currently undertaking with her grandparents. `Walk Two Moons' is glorious. For a long time it feels almost like Sal's story is a collection of vignettes as she recounts the many memories she has of her mother, the enigmatic Chanhassen Hiddle. So many things trigger memories for Sal, something as harmless as a blackberry pie holds a landmine of remembrance. But in teasing out the memories, and questioning the events that led up to her mother leaving home, Sal's story begins to take shape. I wouldn't say that `Walk Two Moons' is ever a strictly linear story - though Sal's recounting Phoebe's lunatic tale is a fairly straightforward narrative, Sal explaining her own story takes many twists and turns. She's a young woman who has gone through a lot of life changes in a very short amount of time - not least of which includes moving away from the only home she has ever known, a new shivery awareness of Ben Finney and the colossal hole her mother's leaving gouged in her heart. It often happens that to understand one component of her changing world, Sal has to go back and look at old memories with a fresh perspective. This is a rather lovely facet of childhood-into-adulthood that Creech explains at Sal's slow and steady pace. Half-way through the book, you will begin to feel a niggling of sadness. Something is on the horizon, and the same way that Sal hears trees telling her to `rush, hurry' or `slow, slow' - so too will the sadness of this book start whispering. It's a creeping kind of sadness - beautifully teased by Creech increment by increment. But there's an overarching theme in the book, concerning the Greek myth of Pandora's Box, a subject Sal's class are studying in English. By the end, tears in my eyes, I decided that `Walk Two Moons' was a literary Pandora's Box in itself - that although there was incredible sadness and pain within, the slivers of hope are the lasting effect of Creech's wonderful novel. The lessons Sal learns, her singing tree, blackberry kisses, the shivery feeling Ben ignites and Phoebe's lunatic are all so beautifully hopeful that the sadness, though sharp, does not prevail - hope does.

• Huzza, huzza

  This is a great book. It's strange and funny. I love Salamanca's grandparents. They're so funny, full of life despite their old age. The writing is very entertaining throughout.

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