Moo by Sharon Creech

Moo is a delightfully sweet story about a young girl and her brother who are recruited to help a lonely elderly woman but receive so much more than they ever imagined.

Twelve-year-old Reena and her seven-year-old brother Luke live in the big city with all its noise, smells and fun things to do. However, when Reena's parents lose their jobs at the newspaper, her mother suggests that they consider moving. Reena wants to move to Maine. It is a suggestion immediately accepted by her mother because her parents met in Maine. 

Their move to Maine is not well received by her families' friends and Reena is not happy either. Nevertheless, they pack up and move to a small harbor town with "gentle mountains" opposite the harbor and around it. There they rent a
"small old house
with a woodstove inside
and an apple tree outside..."  
Reena and Luke ride their bikes
"discovering our new town
its people and dogs and old houses
its winding lanes and gnarled trees."  They also see a farm with what Luke calls "Oreo cows", black and white cows which are black at both ends and a white belt in the middle. The girl in farm field tells them they are called Belted Galloways. As it happens, Reena and Luke pass the farm, Birchmere Farm every day on their bikes. The cows are a bit frightening to Reena but she notes that every day teenagers come to work on the farm. Reena's brother Luke loves to draw but now his superhero characters have morphed into farmer-like people.

Just before the farm, on the edge of town, on Twitch Street, sits the house of Mrs. Falala, an old lady who according to her neighbours owns at least a cow and a pig. Reena and her brother often hear the sound of a flute coming through the open attic window. One day Reena's father takes her and her brother to visit Mrs. Falala, but the visit does not go well. A menacing cat and a "fat black hog" greet them. Reena's dad brings Mrs. Falala two books, which turn out not to be what she wants.

Meanwhile, Reena's mother finds a job teaching English at a private school near their town, but her father is still looking for work. Reena and Luke are sent back to Mrs. Falala's with more books. This time they encounter fourteen seagulls on top of the roof and a long black snake "slithering along the gutter". Mrs. Falala hauls them into the house. The books are somewhat better, but Mrs. Falala admonishes Luke for sucking his thumb and tries to flick it out of his mouth.  This leads to Luke telling her not to touch him and Reena asking her to leave him alone. Mrs. Falala  yells at them to leave immediately. By the time they reach home, their parents have heard what happened and they tell Reena and Luke that Mrs. Falala claims they were disrespectful to her. This leads Reena and Luke's mom to visit Mrs. Falala by herself. When she returns she tells Reena that Mrs. Falala is very charming and that Reena and Luke can really help Mrs. Falala. They will start tomorrow.

Belted Galloway

Reena and her family visit Mrs. Falala the next day. Reena and her brother are enlisted to clean the dung out of her cow barn. After cleaning out so many cow patties, Luke wonders where the cow is. Reena and Luke eventually meet Mrs. Falala's cow who is named Zora. By Reena's admission Zora is "ornery and stubborn" and "was selfish beyond selfish and filthy...". 

But as Reena and Luke continue to work at Mrs. Falala's barn, both Mrs. Falala and Zora become less intimidating and more like family.

Discussion

Moo is a delightful novel that tells the story of two young children who are volunteered by their parents to help an elderly, eccentric woman. In doing so they begin to fit into their new life and come to love the strange but kindly Mrs. Falala.

Creech tells her story in free verse that captures the essence of the emotions of Reena and her brother as they navigate this challenging time in their lives. At first Reena is reluctant to move away from the city. Reena states that she is
"full of buses and subways
and traffic and tall buildings
and crowds of people
and city noises
            honking and sirens and
            helicopterwhirring
and city smells
            bakeries and car exhaust
            hot dogs and coffee
and city lights so bright..."

She wonders,
"Would I know what to do
and how to be
in Maine?"

However, when Reena and her family arrive in their small harbor town, she almost immediately finds good things about it - the wide sidewalks and  quiet, curving lanes allow her and Luke to ride their bikes everywhere and discover their new town. One of those discoveries is learning about cows, which Reena states she thought were like "a LARGE lamb; soft, furry, gentle, uttering sweet sounds." However she quickly discovers they have large heads, enormous noses and make deep, loud mooing sounds. They also have slobbery mouths. And, quite frankly, they scare her.

And then Reena meets Zora, Mrs. Falala's cow. At first she's terrified of the cow as Zora's obstinate nature proves to be challenging. She butts both Reena and Luke and refuses to go where they lead her. But Mrs. Falala insists the children care for Zora and that they show her at the fairs. Mrs. Falala tells Reena that Zora is uncooperative because she doesn't know her and that she needs to introduce herself to Zora.

Gradually Reena forms a bond with Zora, learning how to care for her and how to show her. Reena is no longer afraid of the huge animal and instead she comes to believe that the cow is lonely. Although Zora remains temperamental the bond deepens and a sort of trust forms between the animal and Reena. By the end of the story, Reena is describing Zora as "that stubborn, crazy, belligerent, sweet, sweet heifer." She recognizes the good and bad qualities of Zora's nature and even uses the correct term to describe her "cow".

Likewise, Luke develops a bond with Mrs. Falala. Luke loves to draw and while Reena has been caring for Zora, Luke has been teaching Mrs. Falala to draw. Zora and Mrs. Falala help Reena and Luke adjust to their new life in a rural town. They learn new skills and make new friends. And eventually Reena's family is given a very different life through an unexpected tragedy.

As it turns out, Mrs. Falala was likely looking for someone to take over her farm and Reena's family seemed like a possibility. When she passes away, Reena and her family are not only saddened but wonder what will happen to the animals and the farm. Creech provides her readers with a satisfying, heart-warming ending.

Moo is a lovely short novel that would make a great class read-aloud and would interest young readers who enjoy books about animals.

Picture attribution:  By Amanda Slater from Coventry, England - Belted Galloway, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4855943

Book Details:

Moo by Sharon Creech
New York: Joanna Cotler Books   2016
278 pp.

DVD Documentary: Food Inc.

Food, Inc is an eye-opening documentary on how the way we grow food has changed remarkably over the last 50 years. Although the food industry promotes the idea that food is produced on the family farm in its labeling of food products, this pastoral fantasy is entirely marketing. Instead the food industry in America is controlled by several multinational companies whose goal is to produce vast amounts of food as cheaply as possible, using heavily subsidized specific crops (corn and soybeans mainly) without concern for the environment, the treatment of animals and least of all without concern for the health and safety of workers.

The average American supermarket contains a whopping 47,000 products. Take a close look at what's being sold in your grocery store today and it's evident that the grocery store of the past 25 years is vastly different from the grocery store of the 1960s and 70's. There are no seasons in today's grocery store and there are no bones. Everything is precut, prepared and prepacked.

The reality, as Food Inc. effectively sets out to demonstrate, is that food is manufactured and not grown. Food production in the United States is controlled by a small group of multinational corporations who deliberately hide how food is produced from the unsuspecting public. And the less the public knows, the better.

The manufacturing/industrial system was grafted onto food production beginning with the development of fast food. In the 1930's, the McDonald brothers opened a very successful restaurant. But wishing to expand and serve more customers they grafted the factory system onto the back of the restaurant in the 1950s. They changed the way jobs in the kitchen were performed, so that workers were trained to do only one job, such as cooking hamburgers, meaning they could be paid less. They also wanted all their food to look the same, and since they were selling more hamburgers, french fries and so forth, they required vast amounts of meat, potatoes, tomatoes and other foods. MacDonalds became the largest purchaser of hamburger meat in the United States and it is not surprising that they changed the way beef was produced. The massive quantities of beef required by fast food restaurants meant that beef could no longer be grown on family farms but instead needed to be produced in a way similar to that of a factory - on CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). The result is that today, instead of many beef producers, there are four top beef producers in the United States who control 80% of the market.

From this stunning beginning Food, Inc. takes us through various aspects of food production in the United States, starting with the production of corn. Supermarkets give us the illusion of diversity but many products have some type of corn or soybean derivative in them. Corn is a commodity crop because it can be stored and is heavily subsidized. One of the most astonishing facts I learned from Food Inc. was about the use of corn as cattle feed. Having grown up in a farming community and having lived the past 15 years of my life in a rural farming area in Canada, I know that corn has been used for years as feed, especially in the winter, but never exclusively. Cattle are ruminants, which means that they have evolved to eat grass. When a cow is fed corn, the bacterial population in its rumen changes predominantly to acid resistant E. coli - which is the most dangerous form of this common bacteria . This is a product of both the corn diet and living in a cramped feedlot, the latter meaning that all the cows in the lot eventually have E.coli. This bacteria is in the cow manure which coats their bodies and gets into the meat in the slaughterhouse. As a result most meat today is tainted with E. coli and now this contamination has spread to many other foods such as spinach and apple juice.

As Food, Inc. posits, one would think that as more and more technology is applied to food production, the safer our food products would be. But instead, food is more contaminated than ever today.

Food Inc. explores the feedlot, the darkened tunnel-fan chicken barns, and the vast slaughterhouses, such as the Smithfield Hog Processing Plant in Tar Hell, North Carolina. It also explores grass, seeds and organics. Not many people know for example, that farmers in the United States are no longer able top save their best seeds to replant the following year. Chemical manufacturer, Monsanto, which has a record of producing deadly chemicals such as Agent Orange, created a genetically modified soybean that can survive spraying by their pesticide, Round-Up. Due to Monsanto's prosecution (read, persecution) of farmers who wish to plant non genetically modified soyabeans, over 90% of soybeans today are Round Up Ready soybeans, meaning Monsanto is gradually gaining control of a major part of food production in the United States.

Food, Inc. presents its case in a logical, straightforward manner, without shocking the viewer. By making consumers aware of how their food is being produced, and why our food today is more contaminated than ever, it hopes to motivate viewers into pressuring the industry to change. As the film states near the end, we vote three times per day about how our food is made and what is sold in supermarkets. To prove this point, Food, Inc. indicates that Walmart, a mega-retailer often vilified by consumers, has made changes is what it purchases for its grocery section. It has listened to consumers and the changes it has made are positively affecting the type of food sold in stores. As we did with the tobacco industry, we can effect positive change in the food sold. The film provides viewers with ideas they can do to influence what food shows up in the supermarket.

Directed by Robert Kenner, Food,Inc. interviews major players in the attempt to waken the American public and effect positive change in the food industry. If you are concerned about what you eat, the environment, the treatment of animals and the health and safety of food industry workers and farmers, Food, Inc. is just the film to enlighten you.


For vintage pictures of the first McDonald's store in San Bernardino, California and a brief history of the fast food restaurant, check out this recent story from The Daily Mail in the UK.