Hoot: a brief review

Consider another book officially crossed off the mighty 94 Book List. I remember when this movie came out a hundred years ago, and I remember thinking that it wasn't really a plot I was too interested in, but at some point I stumbled across this in some used book store somewhere and the full extent of my thought process was "huh, a Young Adult book." I'm pretty easy in a used book store, guys.

Carl Hiaasen's first Young Adult book, Hoot, features Roy Eberhardt, who has just moved to Florida with his parents from Montana. While trying to avoid the bully on the bus and struggling to make any friends after being labeled a "cowgirl" when everyone found out he was from Montana, Roy spots a barefoot boy running through the neighborhood one day and gets curious. Following this strange boy lets Roy slowly become a part of his life, where a couple of middle school kids are fighting off a national food chain from building on a site where tiny burrowing owls live.

This book was good, but it wasn't my favorite. It was an easy read, I just wasn't hugely interested in the plot. I'm not a fan of needlessly killing animals, especially for the purpose of expanding concrete and development, but I just never got as passionate about the topic as the kids did. I think part of that is me and my own convictions (or lack thereof), but I'm blaming a huge part of it on Hiaasen. The movement of the plot was pretty slow; you don't read anything about the owls themselves until page 124 and don't find out they're endangered until page 243...and there are only 292 pages in the book. The entire point of the plot seemed crammed in far too short of a space, and I didn't have the opportunity to really care about it as much as he wanted me to. His writing style was also a little over-detailed...even though it's on the shorter side of books there was still way too much rambling descriptions and characters' thoughts. It was fine, it just wasn't the most engaging book. I'm curious to read the other Hiaason book that's on the 94 Book List, Flush, to compare and see if he gets better at the YA thing as he goes.