HOOT BY CARL HIAASEN MAIN CHARACTERS Roy Eberhardt

HOOT BY: CARL HIAASEN

MAIN CHARACTERS • Roy Eberhardt: new middle school student, moves a lot because of dad’s job, gets picked on by school bully, smart and caring. • Mullet Fingers (Napolon Bridger): shoeless running boy, is not close with his mom or dad, does not live in a house with his family, cares for the owls, moves around a lot. • Beatrice Leep: Mullet Fingers’ step-sister, looks after Mullet Fingers, looks out for herself well because she is strong. • Officer David Delinko: police officer, spends a lot of time trying to find out who is destroying the land where the pancake house is being built, knows the owls’ homes will be destroyed. • Dana Matherson: school bully, causes Roy a lot of problems.

SETTINGS • Coconut Cove, Florida: the town in Florida where Roy lives. • Trace Middle School: the middle school that Roy attends. • Land where Mother Paula’s All American Pancake House is going to be built.

CHAPTER 1 • Dana bullies Roy on the bus and Roy sees a boy running on the sidewalk without any shoes on. • Police officer, Officer Delinko, is sent to look at the land where a restaurant, Mother Paula’s All-American Pancake House is going to be built. • Curly, the person in charge of the new restaurant, is upset because the land has been destroyed. • Curly is upset because the building of the restaurant will not happen on time. • Roy wonders why the running boy is not in school and wants to him find him.

CHAPTER 2 • Roy sees the boy without shoes running again. • Roy tries to leave the bus to chase after the boy but Dana grabs Roy. • Roy really wants to follow the boy so he punches Dana in the face so that Dana lets him go. • Roy breaks Dana’s nose and gets in trouble. • Roy chases the shoeless boy but does not catch him. • Later that day, a girl notices that Roy is wondering about the shoeless boy and tells him not to worry.

CHAPTER 3 • The land where the restaurant is being built is destroyed again. • Officer Delinko finds alligators in the portable toilets. • Officer Delinko has to watch over the land of the building to find out who is causing trouble.

CHAPTER 4 • Officer Delinko sees two owls early in the morning while he is watching the land. • Officer Delinko falls asleep on his job. • Curly wakes up Officer Delinko and he sees that someone has painted his police car windows black.

CHAPTER 5 • Roy goes back to where he was following the boy the day before. • Roy finds a trash bag full of deadly snakes. • A voice yells for Roy not to move. • A boy named Mullet Fingers helps Roy to get away from the snakes without getting hurt. • Roy realizes that Mullet Fingers is the boy he saw running without shoes on. • Mullet Fingers makes Roy leave.

CHAPTER 6 • Roy tries to go back to where he saw the snakes with Mullet Fingers and brings a cardboard shoe box. • On the way to Mullet Fingers, Curly sees Roy looking at the land where the pancake house is being built and yells at him to leave. • As Roy is running home in the rain, he runs into Beatrice, the girl who told Roy not to worry about the shoeless boy. • Roy goes to find Mullet Fingers and he is gone.

CHAPTER 7 • Beatrice takes Roy into an old truck and makes him give her his shoebox. • Roy tells Beatrice that the sneakers inside are for the shoeless boy he met. • Beatrice tells Roy she will give Mullet Fingers the shoes if Roy leaves him alone. • Beatrice tells Roy that Mullet Fingers is her stepbrother.

CHAPTER 8 • Curly will lose his job if anything else happens on to land where the pancake house is going to be built. • Watch dogs come look after the land to make sure it does not get destroyed. • A fence is put in around the land the mean dogs come during the night.

CHAPTER 9 • Roy is scared to go back to school because Dana, the school bully is back. • Dana finds Roy to beat him up in the janitor’s closet. • Snakes were put inside of the fence where the guard dogs were to protect the land where the pancake restaurant is being built.

CHAPTER 10 • Beatrice helps Roy when Dana is beating him up. • Beatrice and Roy see that Mullet Fingers has been bitten by a dog. • Beatrice says that Mullet Fingers put the snakes into the place where the dogs were. • Mullet Fingers tells Roy that the restaurant cannot be built because owls live on the land.

CHAPTER 11 • Officer Delinko goes to check on the land sees and hears owls instead of dogs. • The snakes had scared the dogs away. • Curly decides that he needs to stay in the mobile home on the land to try to find the people who are the destroying the land. • Roy’s mom gets a phone call saying that Roy is in the emergency room because he has been hurt.

CHAPTER 12 • Roy, Beatrice, and Mullet Fingers go to hospital because of Mullet Fingers’ dog bite. • Mullet Finger’s tells the doctor that his name is Roy so that Mullet Finger’s mom can not find him. • Roy’s parents go to the hospital because they think Roy has been hurt. • They find out he is not the one who is hurt. • Mullet Fingers, the hurt boy runs away from the hospital.

CHAPTER 13 • Roy tells his mom and dad that Mullet Fingers wants to save the owls from having their homes destroyed. • Roy’s mom tells him that he has lied at the hospital while trying to help a friend. • Roy tells his mom that Mullet Fingers ran away from the hospital because he did not want his mom to know that he was there.

CHAPTER 14 • Roy tells Mullet Fingers that even though owls live on the land, the restaurant will still be built. • Mullet Fingers says he is going to try to save the owls from being hurt anyway. • Mullet Fingers tells Roy to meet him that night at the building place.

CHAPTER 15 • Roy is scared about getting in trouble if he tries to save the owls. • Roy is sad angry because he does not understand how it is okay to ruin the owls’ homes. • Roy makes a plan to make Curly think that Dana is the one destroying the land he is put in jail. • Mullet Fingers keeps fighting for the owls without getting in trouble.

CHAPTER 16 • Curly thinks that the person who has been destroying the land has been found. • Curly sees that someone has damaged the machines used to build the new restaurant. • Curly knows that Dana is not the one destroying the land. • Beatrice and Roy decide to help Mullet Fingers with his plan to save the owls.

CHAPTER 17 • Curly tells everyone that there are no owls on the land. • Officer Delinko goes to visit Dana in jail and decides that he is not really the one who is destroying the land. • Roy goes to feed the owls and Curly sees him. • Curly tells Roy that owls do not live on the land anymore.

CHAPTER 18 • Officer Delinko sees and hears the owls while looking after the land. • He thinks about what will happen to the owls if the restaurant is built. • Roy sees an article in the newspaper inviting people to come watch as they begin the building of Mother Paula’s All. American House of Pancakes. • Roy shows the newspaper article in class and tells his classmates that the owls will be killed if the restaurant is built.

CHAPTER 19 • Officer Delinko tells Curly that he is scared for the owls. • Roy’s parents allow him to go to event where they will begin the building of Mother Paula’s All-American House of Pancakes. • Beatrice is able to go to the event as well.

CHAPTER 20 • The event begins and the people of the town come together. • Roys yells that building the restaurant will destroy the homes of the owls and he will not go to the pancake house. • Mullet Fingers climbs into the hole where the owls live and says that if they bury the holes, they will have to bury him too. • Beatrice, Roy, Mother Paula and other children circle around Mullet Fingers and stop the building from starting.

CHAPTER 21 • Roy finds out that Mullet Fingers’ real name is Napoleon Bridger Leep. • Roy does not know if the pancake house is still going to be built. • Roy’s dad finds out that Mother Paula’s is not allowed to cover the holes where the owls live. • Mother Paula’s All American Pancake House is not allowed to be built and the owls are safe.

The End!