After I found the fortune cookie message, I took a nap. At the end of that story, I realized that Phoebe was not a particularly sympathetic narrator, and I was ready to throw the whole thing in the trash.Ībout that time I found this discarded fortune cookie message in the bottom of my purse, which was 'Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins,' which I had received at a Chinese restaurant in England with this Native American proverb on it. She and her family were quite the opposite of Mary Lou Finney's family. Then, I decided I needed another narrator, and came up with Phoebe Winterbottom. SHARON CREECH: When I finished Absolutely Normal Chaos and thought about writing another book for young people, I first continued where I had left off - just a continuation of what happened after Mary Lou Finney (from Absolutely Normal Chaos) turns in her summer journal at the end of the book. TEACHINGBOOKS: What shaped the writing of Walk Two Moons?

And to receive that same recognition there was quite moving. SHARON CREECH: Winning the Carnegie was probably equally poignant (to the Newbery), because I had lived in England for 18 years and it was sort of my adopted country. TEACHINGBOOKS: You also won the Carnegie Medal in the United Kingdom. And I cannot even begin to tell you all the amazing and wonderful things that happened because of that. I was soon to discover, indeed, how much it meant. One medal.' And then I really felt as if I might have a heart attack, because I knew that this was something very important. Just to show you my ignorance I said, 'So how many of these medals are given out every year? One hundred? Five hundred?' And she said, 'Sharon, one. I hung up the phone, and someone from the publisher called shortly thereafter. I was aware that something momentous was happening, but I really wasn't quite sure what that was. I was living in England, and it was a gray February day when I got this phone call saying that Walk Two Moons had received the Newbery Medal. I knew very little about the award at the time.

SHARON CREECH: The Newbery came as a complete shock, and it changed my life in an instant. TEACHINGBOOKS: You won the Newbery Medal for your novel, Walk Two Moons. Sharon Creech, interviewed in her studio in Pennington, New Jersey on March 24, 2004.

With Sharon Creech Insights Beyond the Meet-the-Author Movie

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