Hoot - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

     Several weeks ago I featured Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen on my Teaser Tuesday / First Paragraph post (here). It is definitely a book for adults. Today my excerpts are from HOOT by the same author, but this book is written for kids aged 10 to 15. It's a great story (Hiaasen's first children's book, written in 2002) and is fun reading for both kids and adults. As with all of Hiaasen's books, there's an environmental slant along with plenty of humor. In this story, the concern is for burrowing owls being displaced by construction of a pancake house.
     The sticker on the cover says: "Newberry Honor Book."  

Here's the Book Beginning:
     Roy would not have noticed the strange boy if it weren't for Dana Matherson, because Roy ordinarily didn't look out the window of the school bus. He preferred to read comics and mystery books on the morning ride to Trace Middle.
     But on this day, a Monday (Roy would never forget), Dana Matherson grabbed Roy's head from behind and pressed his thumbs into Roy's temple, as if he were squeezing a soccer ball. The older kids were supposed to stay in the back of the bus, but Dana had snuck up behind Roy's seat and ambushed him. When Roy tried to wriggle free, Dana mushed his face against the window.

The Friday 56 (from Page 156 in my trade paperback):
     "How would you and Mom like it," Roy pressed on, "if a bunch of strangers showed up one day with bulldozers to flatten this house? And all they had to say was 'Don't worry, Mr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, it's no big deal. Just pack up and move to another place.' How would you feel about that?"

Genre: Children's Book -- Environment/Humor/Mystery
Length: 292 Pages
Amazon Link: Hoot
Author's Website: Carl Hiaasen

Synopsis (from Amazon):
     Unfortunately, Roy’s first acquaintance in Florida is Dana Matherson, a well-known bully. Then again, if Dana hadn’t been sinking his thumbs into Roy’s temples and mashing his face against the school-bus window, Roy might never have spotted the running boy. And the running boy is intriguing: he was running away from the school bus, carried no books, and–here’s the odd part–wore no shoes. Sensing a mystery, Roy sets himself on the boy’s trail. The chase introduces him to potty-trained alligators, a fake-fart champion, some burrowing owls, a renegade eco-avenger, and several extremely poisonous snakes with unnaturally sparkling tails.
     Roy has most definitely arrived in Carl Hiaasen’s Florida.

                 

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Skinny Dip - Teaser Tuesday and First Paragraph / First Chapter

     I lived in South Florida for many years, and during that time, I discovered Carl Hiaasen through his columns in The Miami Herald. It wasn't long before I became a fan and started collecting his novels. Hiaasen's stories involve bizarre characters, crazy plots, sex, murder, and corruption and have an environmental twist. (Warning: R-rated.) 
     Kirkus Reviews says Skinny Dip is "bitingly satirical, sublimely zany, and deeply satisfying." I agree!

First Paragraph(s): 
     At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perronne went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic.
     I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves.
     The impact tore off her silk skirt, blouse, panties, wristwatch and sandals, but Joey remained conscious and alert. Of course she did. She had been co-captain of her college swim team, a biographical nugget her husband obviously had forgotten.
     Bobbing in its fizzy wake, Joey watched the gaily lit Sun Duchess continue steaming away at twenty nautical miles per hour. Evidently only one of the other 2,049 passengers was aware of what had happened, and he wasn't telling anybody. 

Teaser from Page 204 (hardback copy):
     "All you wanted," the man said, "was a hot girl on your arm, Chazzie. A girl your buddies would notice and talk about--the female equivalent of a new Rolex. You weren't getting married, you were accessorizing."

Genre: Mystery / Satire
Book Length: 355 Pages (hardback)
Amazon Link: Skinny Dip
Author's Website: Carl Hiaasen

Synopsis (from Amazon):
     Chaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn’t know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went into biology just to make a killing, and now he’s found a way–doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. When Chaz suspects that his wife, Joey, has figured out his scam, he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner into the night-dark Atlantic. Unfortunately for Chaz, his wife doesn’t die in the fall.
     Clinging blindly to a bale of Jamaican pot, Joey Perrone is plucked from the ocean by former cop and current loner Mick Stranahan. Instead of rushing to the police and reporting her husband’s crime, Joey decides to stay dead and (with Mick’s help) screw with Chaz until he screws himself.
     As Joey haunts and taunts her homicidal husband, as Chaz’s cold-blooded cohorts in pollution grow uneasy about his ineptitude and increasingly erratic behavior, as Mick Stranahan discovers that six failed marriages and years of island solitude haven’t killed the reckless romantic in him, we’re taken on a hilarious, full-throttle, pure Hiaasen ride through the warped politics and mayhem of the human environment, and the human heart.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B of A Daily Rhythm. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at ADailyRhythm.com

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea