Hoot
A Newbery Honor winner and #1 New York Times bestseller — new kid Roy moves to Florida and stumbles into a battle to save a colony of burrowing owls from a pancake house construction site.
Roy Eberhardt is the new kid again, this time at Trace Middle School in Coconut Cove, Florida. His first day is off to a rough start when a bully named Dana Matherson mashes his face against the school bus window — but that’s actually what saves him, because it’s the only reason Roy notices the mysterious barefoot boy running alongside the bus.
Following that boy leads Roy into one of Hiaasen’s signature Florida tangles: a fast-food chain illegally building a pancake house over a colony of protected burrowing owls, a bumbling police officer who keeps falling asleep in his patrol car, a feral kid living in the woods who has been vandalizing the construction site to protect the owls, and Roy’s new friend Beatrice, who is tall, tough, and willing to sit on people until they agree with her.
Hoot is the book that launched Hiaasen’s career as a children’s author, and it’s easy to see why — all the things that make his adult fiction work (environmental outrage, corrupt officials, absurd Florida situations, characters who get exactly what they deserve) are fully intact, just without the more adult content. Newbery Honor winner 2003. Adapted as a film in 2006.
If your crew enjoyed Wrecker, this is the natural companion — same author, same Florida setting, same righteous fury about development, slightly younger audience and tone.
Thoughts from a Looper:
Burrowing owls are real, and they really do nest in South Florida’s vacant lots and grassy fields — small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, living underground rather than in trees. Hiaasen wrote this book partly to draw attention to how often their habitat gets bulldozed for development, and the outrage behind it is genuine even as the story plays out as comedy.
The setting — suburban Southwest Florida, strip malls, construction sites, a school bus route through flat sun-baked neighborhoods — is a specific Florida that Loopers pass through on the Gulf Coast leg. It’s not the postcard version, but it’s very real, and Hiaasen renders it with the affectionate exasperation of someone who has spent his life watching his home state be devoured piece by piece.
A good pairing with Wrecker — same author, slightly younger feel, equally satisfying ending where the bad guys lose spectacularly.
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