HOOT offers interesting and offbeat lessons to readers about violence, activism, and courage. Many of the activities suggested here help students understand the enormous impact that thoughtless actions have on the environment.

How to Join the Chat
Some school district filters prevent classrooms from entering chat rooms, so you may need to ask the district or your school's technical support staff to change the filter setting before this moderated chat. The web address for the chat will be: http://community.scholastic.com/scholastic/chat?chat.id=carl_hiaasen.

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On the day of the chat, return to Carl Hiaasen's Gateway Page. The current "Submit Questions Now," will change to a link to "Join the Chat." Follow that link to enter the chat room.

During the chat, type questions for Carl Hiaasen into the text box at the bottom of the chat screen. To submit your questions, click the "Send" button. Due to high volume, not all questions will be answered.

Free Resources
Go inside the book HOOT in Flashlight Readers, our online reading club.

Incorporate owl facts into your instruction with this lesson plan for teaching HOOT. Includes a printable student activity sheet.

Lesson Ideas
Character Study Dioramas: Ask your students to gather materials pertaining to any one character: Roy, Beatrice, Mullet Fingers, Chuck Muckle, Officer Delinko, etc. The materials can range from newspaper clippings to toys to shoes. Have each student make a graphic display that charts the character’s growth through the course of the story. Finally, ask students to compile a list of questions they have for that character, which they can then bring up in the author chat with Carl Hiaasen.

Community Service: Participate in a community service activity as a class. Ask each student to bring in a newspaper clipping about a community issue. Research or talk about the issues in depth, and then decide as a class which one you want to address and the best way of helping. For example, if a local park needs cleaning up, spend a day picking up litter.

Environmental Awareness: Have your students research examples in their local communities where the environment/natural resources have been harmed or destroyed in the name of development. You could use this Setting Comparison reproducible to help students see the similarities and differences between their environment and the one in HOOT.

Personal Character Development: Ask your students to chronicle in a journal how Roy dealt with the bullying he faced, and then ask them to write about how they would handle similar situations.

In the Teacher Store
Carl Hiaasen's first novel for kids is available in Scholastic's Teacher Store.

HOOT
Roy is the new kid, again, in a new middle school in Coconut Grove, Florida. On one of the torturous bus rides to school, where Roy routinely gets bullied by the big Dana Matherson, he sees a barefoot boy sprinting across roads and fields. In his determination to discover the mysterious boy’s story, Roy gets drawn into a much larger mystery- involving chain stores, burrowing owls, environmental destruction, and a tall, tough soccer player with wild hair, Beatrice. Read HOOT and sympathize, or champion, Roy’s cause.
Grades 3–9
Paperback