Moo: A Novel

Sharon Creech

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Middle Grade | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-14

Chapters 15-30

Chapters 31-44

Chapters 45-62

Chapters 63-74

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Background

Cultural Context: The Desire to Return to Nature

Beginning in the mid-1700s, the Industrial Revolution gradually changed the relationship between people and nature, particularly in the Global North. As people began moving into cities for factory work, their daily contact with nature diminished. Soon, the Romantics, the Transcendentalists, and other artists and philosophers in Europe and the US called for a return to nature. Their art adopted a reverence for the natural world and suggested that humans’ most profound experiences occur in nature. By the end of the 1800s, “back to nature” movements such as naturism took hold in Germany as part of a trend toward “life reform” (Lebensreform). Throughout the 1900s and into the 2000s, various “back-to-the-land” movements arose in the US and Europe, urging people to leave urban and suburban settings behind in favor of rural settings, like farms. These movements are generally popular among socioeconomic groups with the resources to finance such moves. In addition to the arts, science supports the human benefit to interaction with nature.

In Moo Reena’s love for the natural environment of Maine and the animals at Mrs. Falala’s farm, especially Zora, support the theme of The Rewards of Rural Life. This theme explores the “return to nature” motif that periodically resurfaces in Western literature, as well as expressing Creech’s love for rural Maine and farm settings.

Geographical Context: Coastal Maine

Moo’s setting in coastal Maine supports the theme of The Rewards of Rural Life. The US state of Maine lies at the top of the country’s northeast coast, on the Atlantic Ocean. Maine is large compared to other New England states, but it is still the US’s 12th-smallest state. It has a small population of approximately 1.3 million people. Maine’s largest city is Portland, which, in 2020, had fewer than 70,000 residents. Maine is a rural place of mountains, waterways, agricultural land, and it is 80% forested. Maine has warm summers, but its winters are long and snowy, especially in the northern region. For this reason, the southern part of the state is more inhabited, especially in the small cities and towns near the southern coast. Despite the large areas of wilderness and rural land, less than one percent of Maine’s people work in agriculture, forestry, or fishing.

Because of Maine’s natural beauty, uninhabited land, and history as an agricultural center in New England, many people choose to live there because they enjoy outdoor recreation or participated in back-to-the-land movements. Maine is known for foods like blueberries, maple syrup, and seafood, and for activities like skiing, boating, and hiking. Because of Maine’s beauty and distinctive culture, the state has frequently been used as a literary setting. Poets such as John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow have written about the state, and Maine is the setting of books and essays by John Irving, Richard Russo, Henry David Thoreau, Jodi Picoult, Sarah Orne Jewitt, and Robert McCloskey.

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In Moo, Creech depicts Maine as having a slow pace of life centered on family and rural pleasures. She shows Reena and Luke riding their bikes along rural roads, eating ice cream from stands along the shore, hopping from rock to rock on the beach, watching the fog lift over the harbor, and learning to train and show animals. The children’s gradual adaptation to and love for this new environment supports the novel’s themes of Growing Into a New Life and The Rewards of Rural Life.