Picture yourself when you were 13. What kinds of obstacles had you already faced? Was your personal strength ever challenged yet? For Salamanca Tree Hiddle the answers to the questions I just asked is yes. Salamanca, or Sal for short, was plucked up from her home in Bybanks, Kentucky and moved to Ohio with her father after her mother passed away. The story is intertwined with another story when Sal meets a girl named Phoebe, who must deal with her mother suddenly disappearing leaving her perfect family in shambles. The reader is introduced to this story line when Sal begins to tell the story of Pheobe to her grandparents during their road trip across the country to Idaho to visit her mother's grave. The story changes story lines from chapter to chapter between the story of Sal and her mother and he trip across the country to Phoebe and Sal's new life in Ohio. The story challenges readers to keep up with the complex stories while telling an inspirational story of a young girl who loses her mother and tries to find piece in her new life in Ohio.
After reading this story, there are several ways to use this in the classroom. I could ask students to tell their own tale of something challenging they had to overcome, although this would have to be done with 5th graders and might be hard for some of them to relate to what the meaning of a personal challenge is. Another way to incorporate this book into the classroom would be to have the students write a personal narrative about an interesting story that they would want to tell to a relative. This would be similar to the story that Sal told to her grandparents as they crossed the country.
