In the Little Free Library outside the tutoring service storefront near my house, I spotted a beat-up copy of Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech. I took it home to read, because even though it’s a classic, and even though I was a 6th grade English teacher, I had never actually read the book.

I didn’t realize exactly how beat-up the copy was until I opened it last night; it was a student copy from English class, and the owner, a sixth grade girl, had followed the teacher’s directions, extensively.

The front of the book was full of Post-Its in a tidy school-girl print: “Mrs. Cadaver Nice, mis judged.” “Mike Bickle Frantic, Nice, Brave. The lunatic.” “Sal: 13 year old girl. Brave, resilient, and strong.” Yes, she was keeping track of the characters, as the teacher told her. And she had looked up the spelling of “resilient” even though she didn’t always look up spellings. You don’t want to worry too much about spelling when you’re being an active reader.

The Post-Its were only a taste. She had annotated the heck out of the rest of the book, sometimes in blue ballpoint, sometimes in red felt-tip, sometimes in black. She crossed things out when she changed her mind about her ideas, and she underlined things she thought were important in the text. In the margins and at the beginnings and ends of chapters, she asked why things were happening, mentioned connections she had with the characters, and made predictions of what would happen next. She looked up words she didn’t know and wrote the definitions in the margins. She liked the kissing scenes, had strong opinions, didn’t want to think the worst, and wasn’t afraid to hope. “Wait! Her mom disappears to! Did they both get kidnapped.” “Why does the man what to see Phobes mother? How come he was acting so suspetitious?” and at the end, “Oh this is sad!!!!! (frowny face drawing).” 

Then she (or a parent who didn’t look inside) passed the book on to a Little Free Library, because books are worth passing on even if they are creased, written-in, and falling apart. 

Her name, written in the front, was Fatinah. Nice work, Fatinah.

It’s a Newbery-Award-winning novel, funny and full of good language; typical of YA books in the 90s, there’s a lot of death and sadness, too. I recommend it, even though you will never get to read the version I did, where Fatinah was the protagonist.