Hoot

Hoot, by Carl Hiaasen, is a humorous adventure novel for middle-grade readers in which a group of children tries to save the habitat of a colony of owls from being bulldozed. Published in 2002, the book became a New York Times bestseller, won a Newbery Medal, and has been made into a motion picture.

Author Hiaasen is an award-winning journalist and columnist for the Miami Herald. He has written nearly three dozen books, including six non-fiction works and six novels for young readers. Twenty of his books have made bestseller lists. Hiaasen’s stories tend to focus on environmental problems and the political corruption that makes those problems worse.

Hoot was reprinted in 2020; the ebook version of that edition is the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

Riding the bus to school in the southern Florida town of Coconut Cove, new student Roy Eberhardt sees a boy running barefoot alongside the bus. At the next stop, the boy continues running and heads off through the town. Roy wonders who he is. A few days later, Roy again sees the boy. He chases after the boy, who leads him across a golf course, where Roy gets hit by a golf ball. At school, a tall, blond soccer jock named Beatrice Leep collars Roy and warns him to stay away from the running boy.

Vandals keep pulling out the survey stakes at a vacant lot where a future Mother Paula’s pancake restaurant will be built atop nests of burrowing owls. The vandals also let the air out of a truck’s tires and put alligators into the site’s portable toilets. The police hear about it from the city council, and officers begin hourly patrols at the lot. Officer David Delinko, watching the site from his squad car, falls asleep and wakes to find his windows spray-painted black. He gets demoted to desk duty.

Roy confronts Beatrice and tells her that, if she has a complaint with him, she can simply talk to him about it. Roy bikes to the golf course and continues his search for the running boy. He finds the boy’s camp hidden deep in the undergrowth. Roy rides back the next day with a pair of running shoes for the boy. The camp is gone. Roy’s bike gets stolen, and he must walk home in a pouring rainstorm. Beatrice appears, riding Roy’s bike, and gives him a ride to the boy’s second hideout, which is in a junkyard. The boy is not there. Beatrice says the boy is her stepbrother, who keeps running away from home. He and his mother, Beatrice’s stepmother, do not get along, and Beatrice tries to protect him.

The vandalism delays construction of the restaurant. Construction manager Curly Branitt receives pressure from Mother Paula’s corporate vice president Chuck Muckle to solve the problem ahead of the upcoming ground-breaking ceremony, where Kimberly Lou Dixon, the woman who plays Mother Paula on TV, will officiate. Curly installs fencing and hires guard dogs, but the canines get spooked by poisonous snakes and are withdrawn.

Beatrice gets Roy to bring bandages and antiseptic to the junkyard, where her brother, injured by the construction-site guard dogs, lies with a fever. Roy patches up the boy—Beatrice calls him Mullet Fingers for his ability to catch small fish bare-handed—and they all sneak over to the site, where Mullet feeds hamburger to the burrowing owls that live on the lot. Mullet wants to save the owls from the bulldozers. He hates what people have done to the wilderness by bulldozing it.

The boy’s fever worsens, and he faints. Beatrice and Roy take him to the hospital. They admit him under Roy’s name, fearing that if Mullet’s mom finds out, she’ll send him to juvenile hall. Roy’s parents are alerted, and they arrive at the emergency room, but there’s no one in Roy’s hospital bed: Mullet has disappeared. Roy confesses to the ruse and explains that Mullet’s mom hates him and does not want him around. Roy’s parents are impressed by their son’s moral courage and cannot bring themselves to punish him.

Roy locates Mullet, and they visit an abandoned crab boat in a tidal creek, where they sunbathe and enjoy the lush beauty of the surroundings. Mullet leans over the boat and catches a mullet in his hands then lets it go.

Roy and his parents take a ride on an airboat in the Everglades; they see alligators, large birds, and other creatures. Though he misses the scenery of Montana, where he used to live, Roy realizes that, outside the cities, Florida is as wild and beautiful as anywhere. He sympathizes with Mullet’s concerns about wildlife habitat being destroyed to make way for buildings.

Late at night, Roy is awakened by Beatrice, who’s hiding under his bed. She snuck into his house to hide out after her father and stepmother got into a fight. She sleeps on the floor; when he wakes, she’s gone.

Roy wants to learn if Mother Paula’s construction permits are valid. He visits city hall and requests the file, but it’s missing. He buys a box of crickets from a bait shop and releases them at the construction site, but Curly catches him. He explains that he is trying to feed the owls; Curly insists there are no owls on the property and chases Roy off.

Delinko, checking on the site, trips over an owl nest. A baby owl peeks out at him. He realizes he is guarding equipment that will soon kill the owls. Delinko asks Curly about the birds; Curly says they are the corporation’s problem, not his.

Roy loans his mother’s camera to Mullet and asks him to take photos of the owls, which can stop the bulldozing because the birds are protected. For his current events class, Roy tells the students about the groundbreaking, the endangered owls, and his plan to attend the event and protest it.

Many children and their parents appear at the televised ceremony; some students carry protest signs. Roy interrupts the event to present evidence from the camera, but it shows only a blurry picture of a bird. Mullet, buried up to his head in an owl burrow, threatens to tip over a bucket of snakes. A furious Muckle grabs a shovel and chops them up: They’re toys made of rubber. Muckle heads for Mullet, but Roy, Beatrice, and the other kids block his path. An owl lands on Mullet’s head.

Mullet’s mother brings him home, mainly to help her get on Oprah, but Mullet escapes. She has him sent to juvenile hall, but he escapes again. The missing environmental report is found in a corrupt councilman’s golf bag; it shows that the corporation knew about the burrowing owls. Dixon resigns in protest; Muckle gets demoted and quits; the media ridicule the corporation’s hypocrisy, and the company donates the construction site as a bird sanctuary.

Mullet remains at large; Beatrice will not say where he is. Roy visits the abandoned crab boat and tries to catch a mullet; the fish slips away, and Roy hears laughter nearby. On leaving, he retrieves his shoes but finds one of them filled with water: Wriggling inside is a mullet.