Xpress, the Coolest Section of the St. Petersburg Times, is the home for features, news and views of interest to young readers. Most of the work in Xpress, which appears on Mondays in Floridian, is produced by the Times' X-Team. The team of journalists ages 9-17 from around the Tampa Bay area is selected every year at the end of the school year to serve during the following school term. The current team of 12 was chosen out of 150 applicants. Watch for X-Team application forms in Xpress during the month of May.
Read the reviews by Xpress Film Critic Billy Norris
Maybe it's the brain-frying heat or the mind-suffocating humidity, but spend much time in Florida and you realize just how many oddballs live here. As a native Floridian, I say this with great affection for my home state and its off-the-seawall residents.
Miami author Carl Hiaasen's popularity among adults and now younger readers (he's a Newbery Award-winning children's author) tells me I'm not alone in thinking we've got more than our share of folks who are just a few oranges short of a bushel.
Hiaasen's novel Hoot, a quirky ecology vs. development story whose heroes are students in a Coconut Grove middle school, is full of Florida characters, and it scored big-time with our middle school book club kids.
Daren: Great book. I liked the "split personality" of the book. First you'd read about Roy, then Officer Delinko and Curly - everybody kind of had their own series, and then it tied in together.
Ally: Yeah, I like how they kept on going into each other - like when Officer Delinko met Roy and then they split up again - that was pretty cool.
Alexa: In the beginning, I thought it was a little confusing because I had read the first few chapters and then I realized that there were other people's lives that I had to get into. You had to remember these different characters and what was happening to them. It was kind of hard, but then I got used to it and I thought it was really cool how the author did it. I think it'd be hard to write something like this because you'd have to change lives, change personalities while you were writing the book.
Theresa: It left you hanging a lot.
Ally: Yeah, it was impossible to find a good place to stop reading. At first I'd read just a little bit, but then I wanted to get back to the character in one of the earlier chapters, so I started reading the book until I finished it.
Marissa: I liked the book a lot. It was really interesting and funny at the same time.
Mrs. Atkins: So overall, everyone would give Hoot a pretty high rating?
Everyone: Yes.
Mrs. Atkins: On Amazon.com I read a few negative reviews from adults who thought that the book sent a bad message to kids - that vandalism is okay if it's for a good cause (like saving the owls). What do you think?
Daren: That's one thing that made the book interesting. Kids want to keep on reading because it's fun to read about stuff like that, and I don't think any kids would go out do that just because they read about it in a book.
Nathaniel: Yeah, the topic of saving an endangered species of owls isn't all that interesting, but when the author added all that other stuff like Mullet Fingers putting alligators in a (portable toilet) it makes it a lot more exciting.
Mrs. Atkins: That was a pretty funny stunt. I loved Hiaasen's laugh-out-loud humorous scenes like that one. What did you all think about the group of kids who became the unlikely heroes of the book?
Theresa: They were so different from each other.
Ally: But they were all kind of like outcasts.
Daren: Yeah. Roy was the "new kid" outcast at the school.
Nathaniel: Mullet Fingers didn't even go to school, so he was an outcast.
Theresa: And Beatrice - she was definitely an outcast. She was really mean to Roy, but then they ended up becoming pretty close friends.
Mrs. Atkins: So they all came together for a common cause: saving the owls.
Jocelyn: I think the reason they all fit together so much, even though they were all really different, is they felt like they belonged because they had each other.
Theresa: They were all so different from each other, but they were all very determined. I thought Chuck E. Muckle, the man from Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House, was very interesting. He was really worried about Mother Paula's; he didn't really care about what was happening to the kids or the owls.
Jocelyn: I like the way the author exaggerated each of the characters just a bit. There probably wouldn't be anyone like Chuck Muckle in real life because he was so "out there."
Mrs. Atkins: And Chuck E. Muckle is not your average real-life name, is it?
Ally: It kind of went along with that whole exaggeration idea.
Mrs. Atkins: What about the character of Mullet Fingers as not just a hero, but also as an environmental activist? To me, he just didn't seem like the kind of kid you'd expect to be so passionate about something like saving burrowing owls. He doesn't have any of the traditional heroic qualities. He's a school dropout; he lives on the street (or more accurately, in an abandoned ice cream truck) - all these negative qualities, yet he's trying to do something so good.
Alexa: In the beginning of the book, there was so much happening at the construction site like with painting the police car's windows black - I really didn't know what to base the story on. Then, all of a sudden, I find out that this guy doesn't go to school, he hides out from everyone, and he's trying to save these owls. He wasn't like a "rah-rah" kind of person. His ways of going about saving the owls were very, um, interesting.
Mrs. Atkins: For me, the book's Florida setting made it even more fun to read. Hiaasen uses the names of actual places in Florida, so it made me feel I was in on something other people reading the book may not know about. And even though there's lots of exaggeration in the book, as you already mentioned, so much is based on the real world of Florida. Endangered species being threatened by construction, for example. How did Roy feel about coming to Florida?
Nathaniel: He hated it at first. He said that Disney World was an armpit compared to Montana.
Mrs. Atkins: Did Roy change his feelings about Florida?
Daren: Yeah. Having friends helped him to feel better about being in Florida.
Alexa: On his Web site, the author said that he grew up in Florida, so he was writing a book based on what he knew, and what his own childhood was like. At the end of the book, Hiaasen was saying how it's not just the owls; it's everything. We keep building condos on the beach, and the author was saying how we need to save the natural beauty of Florida.
Theresa: I think the message of the book was that if you're determined, you can do anything.
Teacher's corner
Be sure to check out Carl Hiaasen's Web site for a great FAQ on Hoot. Don't miss the author interview, either: www.carlhiaasen.com
Have you read a good book? Tell us about it
"We're Talkin' Books Here!" wants you to tell us what YOU think about the book club's monthly selections, and we want to know what ELSE you like to read. E-mail us your comments and reviews, including title and author and why you like the book, your first and last name, age, grade and school, to hollysatkins@yahoo.com If you have any questions, please call 727 892-2203. Please note: We cannot consider your comments or reviews for publication without ALL the information above.
