Nightmares, Idylls, Mystery, and Hope: Walk Two Moons and the Artifice of Realism in Children’s Fiction

Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons is a defining example of contemporary realistic fiction for children. This article argues that Walk Two Moons models storytelling as a tool which children need to understand their own relationship to reality and to literature. Rather than employing a grim verisimilitude, as some critics have charged, Creech has created a novel of realistic character development which also challenges any simplistic understanding of children’s realistic fiction through its complex and self-referential narrative structure and use of literary language. The result is a narrative which, in the face of painful and tragic circumstances, empowers readers toward a hopeful and optimistic view of life’s mysterie