*Hoot * by Carl Hiaasen has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine.
*Hoot * by Carl Hiaasen has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine.
Roy Eberhardt is the new kid in Coconut Cove, Florida. He is small and smart, which makes him an ideal target for bully Dana Matherson. While Dana harasses Roy and presses his head against a school bus window, Roy sees a barefoot boy running by the bus stop. The boy peaks Roy’s curiosity, and he can’t stop thinking about him.
Meanwhile, police officer David Delinko is called to the future site of the new Mother Paula’s All-American Pancake House. The construction site foreman, Curly, is convinced that vandals are sabotaging the project. Since there’s no monetary damage, Delinko leaves.
The next day, Dana resumes harassing Roy. While being bullied, Roy sees the running boy again. Roy hits Dana, jumps off the bus and hurries after the boy. He pursues him to a golf course but is stopped by a stray golf ball that knocks him unconscious.
After being returned to school, Roy is punished for breaking Dana’s nose. He is suspended from the school bus, and he must write an apology letter to Dana. At lunch, Beatrice Leep confronts Roy. When he ran from the bus, he almost knocked her over.
Roy reveals that he wanted to follow the running boy, but Beatrice warns him to mind his own business. At home, Roy explains to his parents why he hit Dana but lies and tells them he ran from the bus because he was afraid of a bully.
Officer Delinko is called back to the construction site where Curly shows him that the stakes marking the construction site have been removed from the ground and the holes filled back in. He also discovers that someone has put six live alligators in the portable toilets. Hoping to catch the culprits and garner favor with his superiors, Delinko volunteers to help with surveillance at the construction site.
The first morning at his stakeout, he ends up falling asleep in his squad car. While asleep, a vandal paints his windows black. The incident makes the news, which embarrasses Delinko and angers the Mother Paula’s executives. To punish Delinko for his blunder, the police captain puts him on desk duty.
Roy decides to return to the golf course to search for the running boy. He finds the boy’s camping site in the woods beyond the golf course. In the campsite is a bag filled with poisonous cottonmouth moccasin snakes. When the boy discovers Roy, he throws a hood over Roy’s head and walks him back to the golf course.
The boy refuses to share his name, but says that people call him Mullet Fingers. He takes the hood off of Roy’s head and warns him to count to 50 before turning around. When Roy looks, Mullet Fingers is gone.
Roy returns to the golf course the next afternoon with shoes for Mullet Fingers but finds that the boy packed up his camp and moved. A sudden rainstorm prompts Roy to head home. On the way, he runs into Beatrice, who has taken his bike.
She makes him hop on the handlebars and pedals them to the junkyard. They climb inside an old ice cream truck. In it are clothing and a sleeping bag. Beatrice asks why Roy cares about Mullet Fingers. He doesn’t know why he cares. Beatrice agrees to give the boy the shoes and reveals that Mullet Fingers is her stepbrother.
Curly installs a fence around the construction site and rents out German shepherds to guard the place at night. In the morning, he finds the dogs’ owner frantically defending his prized animals from a bunch of cottonmouth moccasin snakes. The man loads his dogs into his truck and refuses to bring them back.
The first day back on the bus after Roy’s suspension has lifted, Dana resumes his bullying. Roy resigns to the abuse. Beatrice gets on the bus and sits next to him. Dana backs off, not willing to pick a fight with her.
After school, Dana drags Roy into the janitor’s closet to beat him. Beatrice shows up. She strips Dana down to his underwear and ties him to the flagpole in front of the school. Having missed the bus, Beatrice steals a bike from the bike rack and pedals herself and Roy to Roy’s house.
At her request, Roy gathers bandages and ground beef. On their way to the junkyard, Beatrice reveals Mullet Fingers’ history and how his mother, Lonna, doesn’t want him. She has tried to ship him off to different boarding and military schools. Mullet Fingers has run away from his current school and is hiding out at the junkyard. He doesn’t want to be caught and sent back.
At the ice cream truck, the pair find a clearly injured Mullet Fingers. A dog bit him. Roy realizes that Mullet Fingers is the one who has been vandalizing the Mother Paula’s construction site. By way of explanation, Mullet Fingers leads them to the site. He takes the ground beef Roy brought from home and lures some tiny owl out of their burrows in the ground. Roy realizes that Mullet Fingers is trying to save these owls.
Mullet Fingers’ injuries have become infected, and he collapses. Roy and Beatrice rush him to the hospital, but tell the doctors that he is Roy so Lonna won’t find out. The doctor calls Roy’s parents and asks them to come to the hospital.
When they arrive, they find that Mullet Fingers is gone. At home, Roy shares enough of Mullet Fingers’ story to appease his parents and tells them how Mullet Fingers is trying to save the owls. Mr. Eberhardt says the Mother Paula’s people can do anything they want with the land as long as they have the right permits.
The next day Roy goes to check on Mullet Fingers. The boy is doing better and invites Roy to join him at the construction site that night. Instead, Roy hatches his own plan to cause mischief.
He goes to Dana’s house and gets the bully’s attention by mooning him. Furious, Dana takes off after him. Roy runs toward the construction site and allows himself to get caught. To avoid a beating, Roy lies about knowing the location of a stash of cigarettes.
Dana agrees not to beat him, since Roy tells him the cigarettes are in the trailer at the construction site. The false information leads to Dana being caught on the property and arrested as the vandal. Dana had prior arrests, so he is sent to a juvenile detention center.
Because all the seats in the construction equipment were stolen after Dana’s arrest, Curly realizes that Dana wasn’t actually the vandal. After questioning Dana, Delinko also suspects that he isn’t the vandal. Dana is still arrested for trespassing.
Chuck Muckle, from the corporate promotional department for Mother Paula’s All-American Pancake House, plans to have a big ground breaking ceremony to celebrate construction. The actress who plays Mother Paula in their commercials is set to appear. To ensure everything goes as planned, Curly stays at the construction site, and Delinko resumes his surveillance.
In the days leading up to the event, Roy tries to find proof at city hall that Mother Paula’s doesn’t have the right permits. But he can’t. After reading about the owls online, he learns they are protected animals. If he can prove the location of their burrows, he might be able to save them. Roy borrows his mother’s camera and tells Mullet Fingers to get pictures of the owls. In an effort to bring attention to the owls, Roy tells his history class about what is happening. His peers are clearly upset that the owls will die if construction goes forward.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Roy is pleased to see kids from his school, Beatrice’s soccer team and other friendly faces there to support the owls. Roy speaks up during the ceremony and begins to talk about the owls. Then Mullet Fingers chimes in, and everyone realizes that he’s buried himself in the ground with only his head showing. He declares that if they’re going to bury the owls, they’ll have to bury him, too.
Chuck threatens to dig Mullet Fingers out if he has to, but Roy, Beatrice and other kids from their school refuse to let Chuck pass. The actress playing Mother Paula joins them in their peaceful protest. Reporters document the scene. The next day, a reporter comes to interview Roy.
Roy explains that an environmental report is missing from Mother Paula’s city file. The missing report reveals that the construction project would harm the owls found to be living at the site. The discovery saves the owls and puts a stop to the construction.
Roy mentions that his family is Methodist, though no actual beliefs or doctrine is mentioned.
None
Roy’s parents make time for Roy and ensure they have a relationship with him. They are concerned when they find out that Roy is being bullied and go to bat for him when he is punished for hitting Dana, even though the attack was self-defense. Roy’s dad talks at length with Roy about the owls. Roy and his mom talk about making hard decisions when it’s difficult to determine what is right or wrong.
In comparison, the Leeps don’t care about their kids. Mr. Leep doesn’t have a job and is content to be a former pro basketball player. Lonna Leep admittedly doesn’t care for her son. When Mullet Fingers runs away from military school, she doesn’t care. She’s just glad that he doesn’t come home so she doesn’t have to deal with him.
Officer Delinko is a young police officer who desperately wants to become a detective. That ambition is what drives him to look for the vandal targeting the Mother Paula’s construction site. He is often depicted as a buffoon; he falls asleep on a shift and wakes up to his police cruiser windows painted black by the vandal. The few times that he is commended for his work, the results came by accident and not due to his work.
Curly is the foreman of the Mother Paula’s construction site. He knows the burrowing owls are living at the construction site, but he actively tries to help the company hide their existence. He is depicted as irresponsible and stupid. Chuck also works for Mother Paula’s and helps to hide the environmental report that reveals the existence of the owls.
The adults at the middle school appear to be completely ignorant of Dana and his bullying. The bus driver doesn’t notice Dana attacking Roy or harassing other kids, even though the bullying is a daily occurrence. The vice principal dismisses Roy’s allegation that he was defending himself when he broke Dana’s nose, even though she sees the proof of it in the bruises on his neck. The school wouldn’t have punished Dana at all if Roy’s parents hadn’t gone to the administration to insist that Dana be held accountable for his actions.
Overall, the adults in this book often act foolishly or are unreliable. While Roy’s parents are the best examples of good authority figures, they, too, are extremely flawed. They don’t question Roy when he disappears or seem to care that he’s lied to them. Also, there is no indication that they will try to help Beatrice and Mullet Fingers, even after Roy reveals that his friends are in an unhealthy and borderline abusive family situation.
The word d–n is used a handful of times. A– is used with the words smart and bad.
Dana is a violent bully. He smacks Roy in the head, pushes him around and even tries to strangle him. During one of these attacks, Roy fights back and breaks Dana’s nose.
Dana comes from a violent family. Roy even sees Dana wrestling with his mother. Dana also shows up to school with a fat lip. Most kids assume it’s Roy’s fault, but Roy suspects it was the result of someone at home roughing Dana up.
Beatrice has a reputation for being a strong and violent kid. When Beatrice finds out that Lonna stole jewelry that belonged to Beatrice’s mother and made it into a toe ring, she tries to bite Lonna’s toe off. There is a rumor that a high school boy slapped Beatrice’s butt, so she threw him in a fountain and broke his collarbone. She uses her strength and size to defend Roy, and at one point, strips Dana down to his underwear and ties him to the flagpole in front of the school.
None
Get free discussion questions for this book and others, at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books.
Smoking: Lonna and Dana smoke cigarettes. Roy never witnesses Dana smoking, but he smells of stale cigarettes. Dana also tries to break into Curly’s trailer because he thinks there is a stash of cigarettes there.
Roy remembers that his mother suffered a miscarriage when he was young. He thinks the loss of his sister is a reason why his mother worries about him.
Movie Tie-In: Producers often use a book as a springboard for a movie idea or to earn a specific rating. Because of this, a movie may differ from the novel. To better understand how this book and the movie differ, compare this book review with Plugged In’s movie review for Hoot.
You can request a review of a title you can’t find at reviewrequests@family.org.
Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.
