You may wonder whay would I post a review of a children's book in here. Well, there are two answers to this "riddle": first that as I was reading this review I realized what a good book this is, and not only for children in age, but also for children at heart, so I hope you finding interesting too. Second, I post this here because of one line at the end of the eight paragraph. Read it, wonder what the book says, buy it and enjoy it!
P.S. I am not advertising this book, there is no commision in it for me whatsoever. But I though the two reasons explained above were good enough to let you all know about this author and his books.
Where the Wild Things Are Victims
By David Pogue
Published: February 13, 2009
Not many authors are equally successful at writing books for adults and children, but Carl Hiaasen seems to have made an effortless transition. His first and second books for young readers, “Hoot” (2002) and “Flush” (2005),won awards and legions of fans. His latest, “Scat,” won’t disappoint Hiaasenphiles of any age.
What’s truly amazing is how much mileage Hiaasen gets here from mining the same narrow niche. Every novel is an eco-mystery set in Florida. Every plot features a greedy businessman (with a dumb-as-bricks henchman) bent on getting rich at the expense of Florida wildlife. Each plot is energized by improbable and hilarious action sequences.In “Hoot,” “Flush” and “Scat,” the hero is a middle-school boy with a feisty female sidekick. Secondary characters include a delinquent bully and a mysterious, benevolent stranger. (In “Scat,” the stranger has wandered in from another Hiaasen novel: he was the protagonist in “Sick Puppy.”)
Yet despite the similarities, the novels don’t feel repetitive — especially not “Scat,” which stirs some new, more ambitious elements into the formula.
This time, the mystery involves Mrs. Starch, an unpopular biology teacher who disappears during a disastrous field trip to an Everglades swamp. At first, it’s hard for Nick, our hero, and his friend Marta to care. After all, Mrs. Starch is a nearly six-foot-tall tyrant who wears “her dyed blond hair piled to one side of her head, like a beach dune.”
SCAT By Carl Hiaasen 371 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $16.99. (Ages 10 and up) Multimedia Carl Hiaasen on the Book Review's Podcast (mp3 14:43 min. audio) Related First Chapter: ‘Scat’ (February 15, 2009) Times Topics: Children's Books |
But before long, Nick is up to his neck in secondary mysteries. What was the tan-colored, fast-moving blur on the video he took in the swamp? Who or what caused the swamp wildfire that day? Why has Smoke, the class arsonist/slacker, suddenly cleaned up his act? Why is Mrs. Starch’s home filled with stuffed animals (of the taxidermy sort)? And if Mrs. Starch is missing, then who’s driving around town in her blue Prius?
“Scat” is by far the plottiest of Hiaasen’s young-people books. The story lines — involving Nick, Marta, Smoke, their parents, Mrs. Starch, local fire and police investigators, the mysterious stranger and the two hilarious bumblers who run the Red Diamond Energy Corporation’s illegal drilling operation — are intertwined in ways that must have required a spreadsheet to track. Not surprisingly, all of these strands are neatly and satisfyingly resolved at the end of the story.
This is also the most contemporary Hiaasen book, dropping names like Facebook, “Harry Potter,” the TV show “COPS,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper — and the war in Iraq.
And here’s the most startling deviation from the Hiaasen formula. Just when the fun is hitting its stride, we learn that Nick’s father has been wounded in Iraq; his right arm is blown off by a roadside explosive. The story returns periodically to monitor the stages of his recovery: his bandages, his infections, his attempts to work with his remaining hand, and so on.
This is all handled unsentimentally and with a positive spirit; Nick conceals his grief, calls his dad Lefty and tapes down his own right arm in solidarity. But this subplot introduces some new, grimmer notes to the series, and not every young fan will know what to make of it.
Still, the ingenious plotting makes “Scat” more engrossing than either of its predecessors. The characters are richer — two of them turn out to be not at all the caricatures they seemed at first. And even the title is a clever pun, referring both to the good guys’ message to the bad guys, and to the panther droppings that hold a key to the mystery. In short, Hiaasen’s novels for younger readers seem to be maturing right along with them.
David Pogue writes about technology for The Times. His first children’s novel will be published next year.
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