Well, I started off really enjoying Creech's thematics and contents for her 2016 novel in verse Moo, as I was simply adoring how Reena's parents actually seem to listen to their daughter's suggestion to move the family to Maine when the question of where to relocate is being posed (so much different to when we moved from Germany to Canada when I was ten, since my siblings and I both had no say at all in the matter and that I was also repeatedly verbally chastised a and reprimanded when I dared to complain a bit and after the move had trouble adjusting and fitting in at school). But indeed, but sadly, as soon as Mrs. Falala makes her appearance in Moo, my original textual enjoyment of Moo (and that the family migrates from a large city to a small town in Maine willingly and not because they are being forced to) pretty well ended up fading into nothing, ended up disappearing into oblivion and leaving me angrily frustrated (and that this annoyance has very strongly remained throughout my perusal and to the point that I can and will now only consider but a two star rating for Moo).
Because honestly, both my adult self and even more so my inner child (and remembering how much I was bullied at school simply because I was German, had an accent and was "different" from my classmates) are simply and utterly furious with and also majorly offended by how Sharon Creech depicts Mrs. Falala in Moo, finding everything about her textual representation problematically stereotypical "Italian" (and in the worst possible manner as well), as someone loud, opinionated, cantankerous, holier than thou obnoxious, lacking any sense of respecting boundaries, basically a portrait of a typical, horribly caricature like and very personally uncomfortable depiction of an Italian grandmother and with the in my opinion artificial broken English Mrs. Falala is presented by Creech as speaking sounding ridiculing, paternalistic and as such also totally nasty. And yes, even if this might well be something unintentional, it ALL bothers me to no end and makes me textually unhappy, furious and even wanting to throw Moo across the room (but not being able to because I am reading Moo on Open Library and of course do not want to damage or to destroy my laptop).
Therefore and combined with some really problematic parenting choices being encountered in Moo (such as for example the parents sending their children alone to Mrs. Falala, to a stranger considered to be eccentric and problematic by the townspeople and then punishing Reena and her younger brother Luke for supposedly being disrespectful to an elder when they dare to fight back against Mrs. Falala harassing Luke about still sucking his thumb and trying to pull the his fingers out of his mouth) and that I also stylistically just do not enjoy how Sharon Creech (with the narrative voice of Reena) keeps misspelling words on purpose for emphasis in Moo (basically lengthening them by adding letters at the end), no, I really and truly have NOT enjoyed Moo after those first few pages, and that the ethnic stereotypical depiction of Italian American Mrs. Falala, yes, that really does make me want to scream (and to point my finger at Sharon Creech and say "stop it already").