Book Review: Hoot (2002) and Flush (2005) by Carl Hiaasen
Seems like the Florida boys are teaming up to help youth act to save a disappearing legacy.by Susan L. Feathers
It's thrilling to see a novelist and journalist like Carl Hiaasen spin tales of adventure and humor that motivate young readers to protect wildlife and natural resources in their hometowns.
My sister Barbara, a master teacher, and my friend Helen the Librarian recently introduced me to Hoot. Helen and I attended a free movie premier for families here in Tucson. It was a hoot, for sure! I ran right out and bought the soundtrack. It features original recordings by Jimmy Buffet who also produced the movie.
Florida like no other place has overdeveloped critical habitat-from coral reefs to mangroves. The youth of Florida are being handed a paltry version of Florida's original beauty. Critical decisions about land and water management go the way of backroom deals allowing slime polluters to ooze through regulations and laws, but with books like Hoot and Flush, we might be saved at the precipice.
Hoot
Set in the seaside town of Coconut Cove, the plot revolves around Mother Paula's Pancake House, a fictitious restaurant chain in Florida, which is about to build its 100th store on a parcel of land inhabited by families of burrowing owls. The developers know it and removed the legal evidence of the owls from public records. Unwary citizens applaud Mother Paula's in Coconut Cove.
A local Florida son, barefoot, blond and nicknamed Mullet Fingers, lives in the backwoods dodging truant officers and acting as a one-man crusader for the owls. He pulls up construction stakes and invents other nocturnal forays to spell development. His step sister, Beatrice (middle-school soccer queen who holds her own with the guys) and Roy (level-headed kid who moves to Coconut Cove from Montana, earning the dubious title of Cowgirl) join with Mullet Fingers to save the owls.
The plot thickens nicely with ingredients like Roy's father being a department of justice agent who advises his son that working through the laws can accomplish as much as clandestine actions. This spurs Roy to search the Internet where he learns the owls are a protected species. That sets in motion a series of steps that illustrates for readers how the laws can work even when citizens try to manipulate them for their own selfish motives.
Throw in a zany cop, a redneck construction boss, a Snidely Whiplash businessman, a high school teacher willing to support kids acting for righteous causes and a bully whose attempts to squash Roy are foiled in evermore creative ways throughout the book…and you’ve got a great read!
Flush
Flush takes place in the Florida Keys. Noah and Abbey have put up with their father's impulsive behavior for too long. The book opens at the local jail where their father waits prosecution for sinking the Coral Queen, a floating casino that is illegally dumping raw sewage into the bay. A popular swimming beach, sea turtle nursery and sensitive coral reef have all been affected but no one has been able to identify the source of the toxic pollution. When Noah and Abbey's father ran amuck trying to get local authorities to act on it, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
Thus the intrigue begins. Mix in Jasper, Jr., pusillanimous son of the perpetrator; Lice Peeking, a greasy ex-employee of the Coral Queen and his more-than-buff girlfriend, Sheila, and you've got hot and spicy. Sheila proves her worth by conniving with Noah and Abbey on an ingenious method to expose the point of pollution in the bay. It involves a lot of flushing!
Hiaasen shows readers the complexities of exposing environmental polluters and how character and odd-ball alliances can play into a solution when driven by the right intent.
These two books offer young readers adventure, great humor and an opportunity to sort out what's right and wrong in a complex scenario. Are Mussel Fingers and Noah's Dad bad guys for violating property rights? Does a higher law prevail? What can kids do about it?
In each story, at least one adult helps kids right a wrong. Roy uses the Endangered Species Act to finally protect the owls; Noah and Abbey use an inventive technique to reveal the point of pollution – both valid ways to work within the law. Yet, like Edward Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang, sometimes it takes a bold action to bring attention to the public's eye. Perhaps it takes both kinds of action.
Hiaasen's love for Florida, where he has lived his entire life, comes through brilliantly in the shimmering descriptions of the flora, fauna, land and sea-scapes in a state long misunderstood by most Americans.
In this sense, too, Hoot and Flush are treasured records of the real Florida that still exists in backwoods and the rare town where balance has been struck between human need and natural communities. These books offer young readers an entertaining chance to examine what we can do to save our priceless natural inheritance all across America.