Hoot cover

Hoot

by Carl Hiaasen

A pancake restaurant wants to pave over owl habitat. Three kids say no.

For you if

you want to protect something and need to see that kids who refuse to drop it can actually change what happens

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Roy Eberhardt is new to Coconut Cove, Florida, and keeps seeing a barefoot boy running from the school bus. Following him leads Roy into a fight to save a colony of burrowing owls whose habitat is about to be paved over for a pancake restaurant. Hiaasen writes Florida with the affectionate exasperation of someone who has watched it be destroyed his entire career — the corruption, the developers, the officials who look the other way, the absurdity of it all. But the kids win. Not through magic or adult intervention but through research, persistence, and a willingness to make themselves a nuisance. The most fun environmental activism novel ever written for this age group and the one that most honestly shows kids that showing up and being annoying is a legitimate strategy.

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