![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The style is smooth and imaginative but cheerfully plain-spoken ("I wanted to jump up and say, 'Phoebe's mother has disappeared and that is why Phoebe is acting like a complete donkey,' but I didn't"), and the folksiness of Sal's grandparents (Sal's grandfather calls Sal his "chickabiddy" and his wife "gooseberry") is warm and uncontrived. Creech skillfully keeps these layers separate but makes their interrelationship clear, and the plot moves along amid all this contemplation with the aid of a mysterious note-leaver, a local "lunatic," an eccentric English teacher, and Sal's budding romance, not to mention Mount Rushmore, Old Faithful, and a poisonous snakebite along the road of Sal's trip with her grandparents. As they travel, Sal relates to her grandparents the story of her friend Phoebe, whose unhappy mother left Phoebe's family Sal finds that recounting Phoebe's story helps her understand the desertion of her own mother, who was later killed when the bus taking her away from her family crashed. Salamanca-Sal-grew up in Kentucky, but she and her father moved to Ohio after her mother's death she and her grandparents are currently taking a road trip to Idaho, where her mother is buried. ![]() Deborah Stevenson (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, January 1995 (Vol. ![]()
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