Rating: 
Summary: Liked it!
Review: Hoot has to be one of the best books I have read in a long time. Please to say an author has come out with something new and interesting. This book was very entertaining and I couldn't put it down. I was able to connect to the characters, which left me very satisfied. If you are looking for a good read, Hoot is the book for you!
Rating: 
Summary: Totally Hiaasen - but definately a MUST for kids!
Review: Fun and original, us adults in the family definately enjoyed it and my son LOVED it - wishes he was "old enough" to read Hiaasen's other stuff...heh, not for a few years yet, kiddo....
Rating: 
Summary: Just OK
Review: This is an average, unimaginative children's book. My daughter and I read it together, and she enjoyed it, but then again she enjoys almost any book we read together. Usually, I know it's good when she takes the book to bed to read on her own when we finish our nightly chapter. This one stayed on the table every night but one.It has a clear environmentalists agenda, which gets unfortunately lopsided and preachy at times. Even as a generally "earth-friendly" guy, I found the baffoonish developers to be needlessly insulting. Children are smarter than Hiaasen thinks, and a more balanced picture of the opposition would have made a much more interesting story. Like so many writers for children these days, Hiaasen seems to think filling the book with fart jokes and questionable language will keep the kids entertained. He also drags us along on several character history sidetracks, most which simply serve to slow the already plodding story. At least one (a past discovery of a dead body having nothing to do with the story) seemed pointlessly dark and gruesome. Yes, overall we enjoyed it, but I grew tired of editing out the repeated [bad words] as I read aloud, and fart jokes get old after the 15th or 20th time. I am thrilled to see more authors attempt to write for children, but I am not convinced Hiaasen fully understands or appreciates his new audience.
Rating:
Summary: OUTSTANDING!
Review: This book is an awesome book. You can't compare it to any book. That's whats so cool about this book. Any reader will love this book! So go out and by it!
Rating:
Summary: Starts Slowly, Ends Well
Review: Hiaasen takes a while to get into the kid lit groove. The first third of the book seems a bit confused, as Hiaasen fights his urge to steer his characters into his usual adults-only mayhem. He fashions a protagonist who is unreasonably precocious and spends too much time setting up adult characters. And then, when Roy's mother has a bed-time heart-to-heart with her son, Hiaasen finds his groove. The rest of the book flies (pardon the pun) as Hiaasen finds the right balance of madcap action for the "tween" reader. Adults who are put off by profanity will find this an appropriate introduction to Hiaasen's sly humor and progressive outlook. And kids who can make it through the first third of the book will find thei reward in a heart-warming and hilarious epilogue. If you read "The Lorax" to your children as toddlers, give them "Hoot" when they start reading novels. They'll love it.
Rating: 
Summary: No more biting humor.
Review: Though written for a younger audience, (and nowhere was this evident when I bought it), Carl Hiaasen's newest fiction dispenses with the outrageously funny characters that first brought him to the attention of National Public Radio and thus to me: the former governor of Florida who now lived on roadkill and dashed into highway traffic in a bright yellow slicker to retrieve his dinner or the towering former biker bar bouncer who lost an arm to a barracuda and now sported an implanted weed wacker in its place.
His passion for the disappearing Florida flora and fauna is still the underlying subject of this book, but without the vividly drawn characters, this is populated with two-dimensional figures in a Carl Hiaasen-meets -the -Hardy Boys novel.
Rating:
Summary: Great for Students
Review: As a seventh-grade English Language Arts teacher, I have been using this book as part of a Read-Aloud and my students love it.... The days that I do not read it to them they are "let down." I think that the author does a great job illustrating specific writing crafts that I am trying to get my students to use.
Rating:
Summary: Owls, sparkling snakes, barefoot boys and lots of mousetraps
Review: Carl Hiaasen forges into new territory: The kid book realm. Cleaned up and devoid of ... violence or much profanity, he makes a cute, quirky book that isn't limited to just kids. If anything, Mr. Hiaasen's literary gifts are more pronounced when there are no seedy elements to distract the readers. Roy Eberhardt recently moved from beautiful Montana to the swampy mishmash of Miami, and he's not thrilled about the change. He misses his old home, and the biggest, meanest bully of all, Dana Matherson, has taken a dislike to him. But on the bus, Roy catches a glimpse of a barefoot kid racing down the sidewalk. When he sees the boy a second time, he punches out Dana and pursues the kid (called Mullet Fingers, for a reason that will become evident late in the book). A mystery vandal is sabotaging the site of a future pancake restaurant, pulling up stakes, sprat-painting a cop car, and setting loose a bunch of glittery cottonmouths. Things don't improve when Roy encounters the boy's sister, Beatrice, a very tall jock with muscles and teeth of steel. Beatrice warns Roy to stay away from Mullet Fingers, but Roy is already quite involved. Mullet Fingers is on a one-boy campaign to save the tiny burrowing owls that live in the construction site -- and will be buried alive in their burrows when the construction begins. Roy begins walking the line between law and outlaw, right and wrong, trying to save Mullet Fingers and the tiny owls. Roy is the kind of kid that readers love instantly -- he's a quiet Charlie Brown who comes out of his shell for a good cause. (And he moons Dana) Mullet Fingers is a little harder to pin down, a strangely but that seems to be Hiaasen's intent. Beatrice is half-hilarious, half menacing -- the scene where she bites off part of Roy's bike tire is a scream. Dana is a pain in the backside, and readers will laugh and rejoice at his comeuppance. And Hiaasen outdoes himself with Roy's parents. He doesn't make them stupid, condescending or obtuse, but rather they trust in the big corporations a bit too much. And one of the most touching elements of this book is that Roy asks his parents for their advice, and protects his kindly mother from the knowledge of how Mullet Fingers' own mother despises him. Unlike many other adult authors who write a book for kids, Hiaasen doesn't dumb it down. He seems to have faith that his kiddie readers can handle tales of corporate double-dealing, enviromental mandayes, and paperwork that most people never have to think about. Kooky elements like a B-movie actress, an ambitious if well-meaning cop (the one whose car was painted), a baby alligator in a porta-john and a bunch of sparkling cottonmouths with taped mouths add an element of surreality to the book. "Hoot" is a hoot, but it's also a charmingly serious novel. Kids will like Roy and the effective but realistic tactics he uses for the owls, and adults will like the thought-provoking storyline and quirky humor. A keeper.
Rating:
Summary: Utterly predictable and soooo PC
Review: I bought this book for my 11 year old nephew, but fortunately I read it before I gave it to him. To quote "Roy" (the main character): "What a crock!" Here we have the all-too-common theme of the Eeeeevil "Big Corporation," out to rape the land and kill the tiny little creatures (as well as sell those horrible coronary artery killers known as pancakes. See how Eeeeevil they are?) We have the courageous kids, so much smarter than the dim adults and so much less corrupted by the gross avarice that drives adults to kill baby (GASP!) owls in order to make (YUCK!) money. We have (SOUND OF TRUMPETS) the Environmental Protection Agency, wielding that most sacred of modern scriptures, the (HOORAY!) Environmental Impact Statement. I will concede that most pre-teens may not know the reality of things like the Klamuth Falls water debacle, in which a thousand farmers went into financial ruin because of environmental hysteria. However, my young nephew has parents who own their own business and who are proud we live in a country that protects private property and personal effort. So I threw "Hoot" in the trash and went out and got my nephew 3 books: Biographies of Daniel Boone, Thomas Edison, and George Washington Carver. I will never buy a child a book that I haven't read myself again.
Rating:
Summary: Give a hoot!
Review: Carl Hiaasen is riding the wave of adult fiction writers down-shifting their word processors to "Kid Lit" in the wake of Harry Potter. In "Hoot," a new Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House will wipe out the habitat of cute little endangered burrowing owls who are "about as tall as a beer can" and mean no one any harm. Some Middle School kids take up the cause. The characters here aren't quite as quirky as Adult Hiaasen, but "Mullet Fingers" could be an adolescent prequel to Viet Vet/former Florida Governor Skink (*Native Tongue* etc.) Here's what this savvy kid says about his home in South Florida, which is just as applicable here in Northern Minnesota or anywhere else encroached by real estate development juggernauts: "Ever since I was little... I've been watchin' this place disappear - the piney woods, the scrub, the creeks, the glades. Even the beaches, man - they put up these giant hotels and only goober tourists are allowed. It really sucks." "Hoot" encourages concern for the environment and social conscience. For a "Young Adult" book, there is some questionable language and a possibly non-sequitur too-detailed focus on our "only-child" hero's mother's miscarriage. As they say in the movies: "Parental discretion advised." reviewed by TundraVision
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