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Walk Two Moons · Garden Heights
Part 3
for Walk Two Moons · Part 3 · Chapters 12–17
8 Parts40 min
What Happens in Part 3
A snakebite on the Missouri River and troubling messages at Phoebe's house darken both journeys at once.
Pipestone and CourtshipThe car crosses the Mississippi River, then, near South Dakota, Gramps swings north to Pipestone, Minnesota, where American Indians have quarried soft red stone for ceremonial pipes for centuries; the travelers watch carvers and share a peace pipe. That night Gramps delivers his nightly marriage-bed line and tells of chasing the wild young Gram twenty-two days, her father's catch-her dare, his gentleness with his beagle deciding her, and the heirloom bed his father and brothers smuggled into the wedding cabin.
Missouri SnakebiteIn South Dakota the travelers stop to cool off in the Missouri River. A young man with a knife orders them off private property — and while everyone stands frozen, a water moccasin, a venomous water snake, bites Gram's leg. Suddenly the stranger, Tom Fleet, is an ally: Gramps opens the wound with the knife, Tom sucks out venom en route to the hospital, and Gram stays overnight — Gramps wedged into her hospital bed, Tom dozing in the waiting room.
The Singing TreeLeaving the hospital, a bird's warble sends Sal back to the singing tree at Bybanks — the tree that seemed to sing by itself, and that stood silent the day she learned her mother was not coming back. Phoebe's story darkens too: Mr. Birkway, the wildly enthusiastic English teacher, collects the class's private summer journals.
A Tiny LifeMrs. Cadaver digs up her rhododendron bush with Mr. Birkway's help, and Phoebe decides a murdered husband lies underneath it. Mrs. Winterbottom comes home upset and asks whether her daughters think she leads a tiny life — and when a third message arrives, asking what anything matters in the course of a lifetime, she is the one the words seem to wound. Sal watches and thinks of another mother who grew restless in her own kitchen.
What We Will Learn
Section
What you will practice
Vocabulary
Nerves, journeys, and hidden plans: agenda, flustered, suspicious, venom, melancholy…
Literary Elements
The frame story that nests Phoebe’s troubles inside Sal’s road trip, flashbacks triggered by the road itself, and symbols — a silent tree, an uprooted bush
Cross-Curricular
Glacial geography — how an ice sheet carved the Great Lakes, why Lake Michigan behaves like a sea without salt, and what crossing the Mississippi has always meant
Chapter Summary
Ch.
What happens
Chapter 12
The Marriage Bed — The car crosses into the West and Gramps detours to Pipestone, Minnesota, where sacred red stone is quarried for ceremonial pipes; the travelers share a peace pipe. At the motel comes the nightly ritual line about the marriage bed — and the story of a twenty-two-day courtship, a father’s catch-her-first condition, one well-loved beagle, and an heirloom bed smuggled into a newlyweds’ cabin.
Chapter 13
Bouncing Birkway — Sal describes her English teacher: a man so full of enthusiasm he seems to bounce. On the first day of school he collects the private journals the class kept over the summer, and the students hand them over warily. Journal-less Sal is promised a different assignment — and she warns her grandparents that those journals mean trouble ahead.
Chapter 14
The Rhododendron — From Phoebe’s window the girls watch Mrs. Cadaver dig up a rhododendron bush — with Mr. Birkway’s help — and Phoebe becomes certain a murdered husband lies beneath it. Mrs. Winterbottom comes home upset and asks her daughters a question that stops Sal cold: does her life seem tiny?
Chapter 15
A Snake Has a Snack — In South Dakota the travelers cool off in the Missouri River. A young stranger pulls a knife over private property — then a water moccasin bites Gram. Gramps opens the wound, the stranger sucks out the venom on the race to the hospital, and Gram is kept overnight, with Gramps wedged stubbornly into her bed.
Chapter 16
The Singing Tree — Leaving the hospital, Sal hears a warble in the poplars and remembers the singing tree at Bybanks: a tree whose unseen bird sang so steadily that the tree itself seemed to sing — until the day the news came that her mother was not coming back, when it stood silent.
Chapter 17
In the Course of a Lifetime — A third message lands on the Winterbottoms’ porch, asking what anything matters in the course of a lifetime. Prudence is annoyed, Phoebe teases her that cheerleading tryouts will not matter in the long run, and only Sal sees how deeply the message unsettles Mrs. Winterbottom.
Part 1
Vocabulary
Study 10 key words from Chapters 12–17, then answer each question.
📚Knowledge Bank · A Word With a To-Do List
Etymology · AgendaThe second message left at Phoebe’s door turns on one borrowed word. In Latin, agenda literally means the things that must be done. English took the word in the 1600s as a piece of meeting-room furniture: the written list of items a committee must work through before it can go home. Then the meaning drifted. If a person’s agenda is everything that person intends to accomplish, then it includes the intentions never written down or said out loud — and by the twentieth century English speakers were talking about a hidden agenda, the private plan behind a public smile. That drifted meaning is the one the anonymous note uses. It claims that every character Sal and Phoebe know — a fluttery mother, a cheerful teacher, a widow digging in her yard — is quietly working through a list of wants and worries that nobody else can read. Watch each adult in these chapters and ask what is on that unseen agenda.
courtingn.Ch.12
An old-fashioned word for the time when two people date, hoping to marry
“Gramps loves telling stories from his courting days, when he chased Gram for twenty-two days.”
agendan.Ch.12
A plan or list of things a person means to get done
“The second message claims that every person carries an agenda.”
enthusiasticadj.Ch.13
Full of eager excitement and energy
“Mr. Birkway is so enthusiastic that he seems to bounce around the classroom.”
peculiaradj.Ch.13
Strange or odd; unusual
“Phoebe finds nearly everything about her neighbors peculiar.”
transplantv.Ch.14
To dig up a plant and replant it in a new place
“Mr. Birkway helps Mrs. Cadaver transplant the rhododendron bush.”
suspiciousadj.Ch.14
Believing that someone may be guilty of something
“Phoebe grows suspicious of everyone who passes the house.”
venomn.Ch.15
The poison a snake injects when it bites
“Tom Fleet sucked the venom from Gram’s snakebite.”
melancholyadj.Ch.16
Deeply sad and thoughtful
“A melancholy feeling settles over Sal when she remembers the silent tree.”
restlessadj.Ch.16
Unable to stay still or feel content
“Sal’s mother grew restless long before she boarded the bus west.”
flusteredadj.Ch.17
Nervous, rattled, and confused
“Mrs. Winterbottom grows flustered whenever a new message appears.”
ⓘ 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.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1The Knowledge Bank explains that people could speak of a hidden agenda once the word agenda had drifted to mean ___.Ch.13
2‘Venom’ is the poison a snake delivers when it bites.Ch.15
3A ‘peculiar’ habit is one that is ___.Ch.13
4Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.12
Word choices:agendacourtingflusteredvenom- some words will not be used
The second message said that everyone has his own .
Gramps loves telling stories from his days.
5To ‘transplant’ a bush is to ___.Ch.14
6A ‘melancholy’ mood is a cheerful, playful one.Ch.16
7‘Courting’ is an old-fashioned word for ___.Ch.12
8Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.16
Word choices:restlesssuspiciousmelancholypeculiar- some words will not be used
Phoebe grew of every stranger on the street.
Sal’s mother became long before she left Bybanks.
9Someone who is ‘flustered’ is ___.Ch.17
10An ‘agenda’ can mean a person’s private plan.Ch.12
Part 2
Comprehension
Show you understood what happens in Chapters 12–17.
🔍Knowledge Bank · What Hands Give Away
Psychology · Body LanguagePeople say far more than they speak. Psychologists who study nonverbal communication — the messages sent by posture, hands, eyes, and voice — find that listeners often trust those signals over the actual words, especially when the two disagree. A gesture can leak a feeling its owner is trying to hide: twisting a dish towel, laughing a beat too brightly, glancing at a door. Sharon Creech (author) builds these chapters almost entirely out of such leaks. Mrs. Winterbottom insists everything is fine while her unhappiness shows in trembling hands and chores nobody thanks her for. Sal never announces her grief; instead her whole body answers for her, because a sudden flinch is a startle reflex — an automatic jump wired in by past hurt, faster than any decision. Reading this novel well means reading people the way detectives do: when the mouth will not talk, watch what the hands confess.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1According to the Knowledge Bank, when spoken words and body signals disagree, listeners often ___.Ch.12
2According to Gramps’s story, what finally convinced Gram to marry him?Ch.12
3Mr. Birkway collects the journals the students kept over the summer.Ch.13
4What do Phoebe and Sal watch Mrs. Cadaver do in her yard?Ch.14
5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events. Number 1 = what happens first.Chapters 12–17
Phoebe decides a body is buried under the rhododendron.
Gramps detours to the pipestone quarries in Minnesota.
A water moccasin bites Gram at the Missouri River.
Mr. Birkway collects the summer journals.
The third white message upsets Mrs. Winterbottom.
6Mrs. Winterbottom laughs off the message about the course of a lifetime.Ch.17
7What happens while the travelers cool off in the Missouri River?Ch.15
8How does Gramps spend the night at the hospital?Ch.15
9In Sal’s memory, the singing tree sang most sweetly on the day the bad news arrived.Ch.16
10What does the third message ask?Ch.17
Part 3
Literary Elements
Understanding HOW and WHY Sharon Creech tells the story across Chapters 12–17.
🎭Knowledge Bank · The Secrets in a School Journal
Literary Craft · The Journal DeviceWhen a writer needs private thoughts to become public at exactly the wrong moment, a journal is the perfect machine for it. A diary talks in a character’s truest voice, so whatever it says carries more weight than dialogue spoken aloud — nobody performs for an audience in a notebook. That is why Mr. Birkway’s assignment quietly loads the novel like a spring: every student hands him a private record, and the reader knows those pages must eventually be read aloud. The device has a long pedigree — epistolary novels of the 1700s, built entirely from letters, worked the same trick of letting readers eavesdrop on what was never meant for them. Sharon Creech (author) uses the journals for both comedy and exposure: a silly entry embarrasses one student while another entry cuts close to a hidden grief. Watch what each journal reveals about its writer — and notice that the most careful writers are usually the ones with the biggest secrets.
Frame Story
One story nested inside another — Sal tells Phoebe’s story aloud in the car, while her own story travels quietly underneath it.
Flashback
The present is interrupted by an earlier scene — a bird’s warble or a motel bed sends the story back to Bybanks and a long-ago courtship.
Symbol
An object that stands for something larger — a singing tree gone silent, a rhododendron dug up roots and all.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1The Knowledge Bank explains that a diary carries more weight than spoken dialogue because ___.Ch.12
2Sal’s sudden shift back to the singing tree in Bybanks is ___.Ch.16
3A flashback interrupts the present to show an earlier event.Ch.16
4The silent singing tree stands for the mother’s absence, making it ___.Ch.16
5Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.14
Word choices:symbolflashbackframerhyme- some words will not be used
The rhododendron pulled up roots and all works as a .
Sal’s memories of Bybanks arrive as a .
6In a frame story, one tale is told inside another.Ch.12
7Gramps’s tale of courting Gram, told inside Sal’s trip, is best called ___.Ch.12
8A symbol is an object that stands only for itself.Ch.16
9Retracing the mother’s exact route makes the whole road trip feel like ___.Ch.15
10Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.17
Word choices:framesuspensesymbolflashback- some words will not be used
Sal’s road trip wraps around Phoebe’s story as its .
The unexplained white messages build .
Part 4
Think Deeper
Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.
💡Knowledge Bank · The Line Down the Middle
Hydrology · The MississippiThe great river the travelers put behind them is small where it starts. At Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, the Mississippi begins as a stream so shallow that visitors wade across it on stepping stones; about 2,340 miles later it pours into the Gulf of Mexico. In between it collects the water of hundreds of rivers. Its watershed — the total area of land that drains into one river — covers all or part of thirty-one states, roughly forty percent of the continental United States. A river that big organizes how people imagine a continent. The name itself comes from Ojibwe words meaning great river, and for the first century of the United States the Mississippi was the practical boundary of the known country: maps grew vague past its far bank, and crossing it meant leaving the settled East. Sal feels a version of that old geography from the back seat. On the near side of the water lies home; on the far side begins her mother’s West.
Picture a slow brown river on a hot South Dakota afternoon. Three travelers stop to cool their feet, a stranger appears holding a knife — and then something worse than the stranger glides through the water: a snake with venom in its bite. In these chapters the road west turns serious. The car has left the Great Lakes country behind, slipped over the Mississippi — the continent’s old dividing line — and climbed toward the dry plains, with a detour to the sacred red-stone quarries at Pipestone, Minnesota. At every motel Gramps pats the mattress, repeats his ritual line about the marriage bed, and tells how a well-loved beagle won him a wife. Meanwhile, in the story Sal is telling, the second white message — everyone has his own agenda — hangs over Phoebe’s street. An English teacher collects journals people wish they had never written. A rhododendron comes out of the ground with a teacher’s help, and Phoebe smells murder. And a mother comes home upset and asks her daughters, very quietly, whether they think her life is a tiny one.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1Claim: “In these chapters, small habits and gestures reveal feelings the characters never say aloud.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence
2Happens on the road trip, or Happens in Phoebe’s story? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two
◄ Happens on the road tripHappens in Phoebe’s story ►
3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect
The second message asks about hidden agendas→
Mrs. Winterbottom’s quiet work goes unnoticed at home→
A water moccasin bites Gram on the leg→
A bird warbles outside the hospital→
🧠Knowledge Bank question
4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument
The Knowledge Bank argues that the Mississippi organized how Americans imagined the continent because , which shows that .
Part 5
Standardized Test
An Inland Sea · Reading & Vocabulary · SAT & TOEFL-style practice
Read the passage — the highlighted words are tested — then answer. Tap an answer, then tap it again to confirm.
SATCentral Ideas — the passage's main point
SATInference — a conclusion the passage implies
SATAuthor’s Purpose — what the author wants to achieve
SATWords in Context — a word's meaning in this passage
TOEFLFactual Information — a fact stated in the passage
TOEFLVocabulary — a tested word's meaning here
An Inland Sea
Twenty thousand years ago, the land that now holds the Great Lakes lay buried under ice. A colossal glacier called the Laurentide Ice Sheet had spread south out of Canada, and in places it stood nearly two miles thick — so heavy that it pressed the crust of the earth downward. Ice on that scale is restless — it does not sit still; it flows. As the sheet crept forward it worked like a slow plow, tearing up soil, grinding bedrock into powder, transplanting boulders into distant new ground, and excavating old river valleys into basins hundreds of feet deep. When the climate warmed, the dying glacier released floods of meltwater, and the water filled the holes the ice had dug.
The result is a chain of five connected lakes so vast that early French explorers called them sweetwater seas. Stand on a Lake Michigan beach and you cannot see the far shore; the water simply meets the sky, as an ocean does. Autumn storms can pile up waves more than twenty feet high, powerful enough to sink great ships. Yet one taste proves this is no ocean, for the water carries almost no salt. Oceans grew salty because rivers delivered dissolved minerals for billions of years while evaporation removed only pure water; the young Great Lakes, by contrast, drain steadily toward the sea, so their minerals wash out instead of piling up.
Together the five lakes hold about one fifth of the fresh surface water on Earth. They serve as a private ocean for the middle of the continent, floating freighters of iron ore and grain between inland ports. Every dune, harbor, and pebble beach along their shores is a remnant of the ice age. The sea in the middle of America is made of melted ice.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1Which sentence best states the main idea of the passage?SAT · Central Ideas
2According to the passage, what did the ice sheet do as it flowed forward?TOEFL · Factual Information
3The passage says early French explorers called the lakes ___.TOEFL · Factual Information
4It can be inferred that if the Great Lakes stopped draining toward the sea, they would ___.SAT · Inference
5The passage states that the ice sheet was so heavy that it ___.TOEFL · Factual Information
6Why does the author describe standing on a beach and seeing no far shore?SAT · Author’s Purpose
7The passage suggests that without the ice age, the region would probably ___.SAT · Inference
8In the passage, restless most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
9In the passage, the word colossal is closest in meaning to ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary
10In the passage, transplanting most nearly means ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary
Part 6 · Optional
Creative Writing
A bonus challenge to practice your English. Take your time and have fun with it.
About This Section
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 3 “The Person Nobody Notices”
Sal watches Mrs. Winterbottom do endless quiet work for a family that barely looks up from its own business — until the woman finally asks whether her life seems tiny. Think of someone in your life whose everyday effort mostly goes unnoticed — a parent, a custodian, a teammate, a friend. Describe exactly what this person does, why people overlook it, and what you imagine might be on his or her hidden agenda of hopes. 6–10 sentences. End with one thing you could do to show this person that somebody noticed.
You can start with: “Every day, almost invisibly, this person...”
0 / 40 words minimum
🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)
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.
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.
