Part 1
Thirteen-year-old Sal drives west with her grandparents toward her mother in Idaho, filling the miles with Phoebe Winterbottom's story.
Bybanks to EuclidSalamanca Tree Hiddle — Sal — is thirteen. A year ago her father moved them from their farm in Bybanks, Kentucky — hills, trees, a swimming hole — to a cramped house in Euclid, Ohio, its yards repeating, its trees planted in sidewalk circles. He moved partly because of Margaret Cadaver, a friend who helped him settle, and Sal cannot make herself like her. At Margaret's door Sal refuses to go in — and sees a girl's round face watching from a window next door.
Seven Days WestNow Sal rides with Gram and Gramps Hiddle, driving two thousand miles west toward Lewiston, Idaho, where her mother is. The trip has one rule: seven days, so Sal arrives by her mother's birthday — and no rule at all for her grandparents, who stop wherever the country interests them. Sal, who trusts neither cars nor luck, hears a whisper under the miles: rush, hurry, rush.
Enter PhoebeTo fill the hours, Sal tells them about Phoebe Winterbottom: the girl behind the window glass, her very proper father, her sweet mother who looks strangely unhappy inside a respectable life, her older sister Prudence, and Phoebe's gift for wild theories — above all her certainty that Margaret Cadaver, whose last name means a dead body, has murdered her husband and buried him in the backyard. Sal even wins Phoebe's admiration by calmly carrying a spider out of harm's way.
Blackberries and RescuesOn the road, Gramps plays rescuer to a damsel in distress at a rest stop — taking a stranded woman's engine apart so thoroughly that she ends up calling a mechanic — while Sal silently counts her seven days. Small things keep opening doors onto her past: blackberries at the Winterbottom supper carry her back to Bybanks mornings picking berries with her mother, who took only the people-height ones, leaving the low ones for rabbits and the high ones for birds.
| Section | What you will practice |
|---|---|
| Vocabulary | Words for a nervous journey: peculiar, cadaver, respectable, gullible, frantic… |
| Literary Elements | A frame story that carries one tale inside another, flashbacks that slip out of the moving car, and foreshadowing in a whisper |
| Cross-Curricular | Geography — the two-thousand-mile interstate route from Ohio to Idaho, and how travelers read it by landmarks instead of miles |
| Ch. | What happens |
|---|---|
| Chapter 1 | A Face at the Window — Sal explains how her father moved them from Bybanks, Kentucky to Euclid, Ohio, partly to be near Margaret Cadaver. Refusing to enter Margaret’s house, Sal spots a girl’s face watching from the house next door — Phoebe Winterbottom. |
| Chapter 2 | The Chickabiddy Starts a Story — Gram and Gramps set out west with Sal: seven days to reach Lewiston, Idaho by her mother’s birthday. Sal, uneasy in cars and hearing a whisper that says rush and hurry, agrees to pass the miles by telling Phoebe’s story. |
| Chapter 3 | Bravery — Sal begins the story with her first days in Euclid: the tiny house, the tinier lawn, and meeting Margaret Cadaver. When Sal calmly carries a spider to safety, Phoebe declares her brave — and Gram breaks in to agree that Hiddles have always been brave. |
| Chapter 4 | That’s What I’m Telling You — While the girls wait for supper, Phoebe confides her dark suspicions about Margaret Cadaver — whose last name, she points out, means a dead body. Phoebe’s polite family polishes its respectable life and worries endlessly about cholesterol. |
| Chapter 5 | A Damsel in Distress — In the car, Gram remembers a girl named Gloria who once had her eye on Gramps. At a rest stop, Gramps plays rescuer to a woman whose car will not start, taking her engine to pieces until she quietly calls a mechanic — while Sal feels her seven days ticking away. |
| Chapter 6 | Blackberries — At a proper, meatless Winterbottom supper, Sal watches Phoebe’s mother sigh into a silence nobody notices. Blackberries carry Sal back to Bybanks, picking berries with her mother, who took only the ones at people-height and left the rest for the rabbits and birds. Then Phoebe whispers her full theory: Mrs. Cadaver murdered her husband and buried him in the backyard. |
ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.
- Gram and Gramps set out west with Sal in the car.
- Gramps takes apart a stranger’s engine at a rest stop.
- Phoebe shares her full theory about Mrs. Cadaver.
- Sal begins telling her grandparents Phoebe’s story.
- Sal and her father leave Bybanks and move to Euclid.
Picture a thirteen-year-old girl folded into the back seat of her grandparents’ car, watching Ohio pour past the window. She has seven days to cross most of a continent, because on the seventh day her mother has a birthday, and her mother is in Idaho, and nothing about that sentence is as simple as it sounds. In the front seat, Gram and Gramps Hiddle treat the highway like a front porch — waving at strangers, stopping for anyone in trouble, refusing to be hurried by anything, least of all a clock. And under the engine noise the girl keeps hearing something no one else hears: a whisper riding along with her, saying rush, hurry, rush. So she does what storytellers have always done with a long road and a heavy heart. She starts a story — about her friend Phoebe Winterbottom, a family devoted to being respectable, and a neighbor whose name means dead body. Part 1 is a girl putting one story between herself and another.
On a road map of the United States, a line from northern Ohio to the mountains of Idaho looks simple: one stroke of a pen, about two thousand miles long. A car following that line crosses nearly half a continent. It also crosses several different Americas, arranged in broad bands that a driver can watch change through the windshield. Hardwood forest gives way to corn country, corn country flattens into open plains, and the plains finally break against the Rocky Mountains.
The distance is hard to feel until you turn it into time. Interstate highways — the wide, numbered superhighways begun in the 1950s — let a car hold a steady sixty-five miles per hour for hours at a stretch, yet two thousand miles still works out to more than thirty hours behind the wheel. Almost nobody is reckless enough to attempt it in one push. A family covering a respectable three hundred miles a day needs about a week, which is why drivers learn to think in days instead of miles. Before the interstates existed, the same trip followed two-lane roads through the main street of every town and took nearly twice as long.
Experienced travelers rarely watch the odometer — the dial that counts a car's miles — because numbers say little about where you actually are. They read the country instead. The first sight of the Mississippi River, the moment the trees thin out, the pale wall of mountains rising on the horizon: each landmark is a milestone that announces a change no road sign ever marks. Measured that way, a long drive stops being a monotonous count of miles and becomes a story with chapters, and the land itself tells you how far you have come.
This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!
Writing Task — Part 1 “Out the Car Window”
Sal watches a whole country slide past the window while a story fills the car. Write about a real trip you have taken — long or short. Describe what you watched changing outside, who was with you, and one story or conversation from the ride. 6–10 sentences. End with the moment you realized you were far from home.
No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.
Part 1 Complete!
You finished Chapters 1–6 of Walk Two Moons.
Here are your auto-graded results:
Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Sharon Creech. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Sharon Creech’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.