Hoot

Hoot is a 2002 mystery/suspense novel, recommended for ages 9–12, by Carl Hiaasen. The setting takes place in Florida, where new arrival Roy makes two oddball friends and a bad enemy, and joins an effort to stop construction of a pancake house which would destroy a colony of burrowing owls who live on the site. The book won a Newbery Honor award in 2003. Plot The main character Roy Eberhardt moves from Montana to Florida and into the fictional town of Coconut Cove, where a 7th grader, Dana Matherson, starts to bully him. On the bus to school, Roy sees a boy running barefoot outside. Roy tries to leave the bus, but Dana viciously chokes and strangles him. He escapes after punching Dana in the face, breaking his nose, and then exiting the bus. However, Roy can't catch the running boy because a golf ball hits Roy in the head. Vice-Principal Viola Hennepin suspends Roy from the bus for two weeks and orders him to write an apology to Dana. Roy calls for a truce, but Dana refuses to accept. A restaurant called Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House decides to build a franchise in Coconut Cove, but vandalism delays the work. Roy learns the running boy is the vandal known as "Mullet Fingers" and they become friends. Mullet Fingers vandalizes and delays construction overseen by Chuck Muckle to save the endangered burrowing owls on the site. The construction foreman Leroy "Curly" Branitt denies the owls' existence. Roy helps Mullet Fingers prove otherwise and tells his class including Beatrice Leep about the owls, and how construction will kill the endangered species, and encourages them to join him in protests.