Drilling for natural gas and oil. The protection of state forests and parks. Fathers who are in the National Guard as part-time soldiers, called up to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. The worries of families left behind. The hope of maybe, one day, seeing an elusive animal in the wild land nearby – the panther, the puma, the cougar.
When I picked up Carl Hiaasen’s newest young adult novel, Scat, I had no idea the storyline would be so relevant to our current experiences in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. I just wanted to read Scat because I’ve enjoyed Hiaasen’s other books – those mysteries written for adults, and the eco-adventures more recently penned for the younger crowd.
Hiaasen is a great summer read, as his crazy cast of characters faces off over environmental issues, political scandals, and corporate greed-driven lies. The fodder for Hiaasen’s fiction comes straight from the headlines he helped write in his many years as investigative journalist for the Miami Herald. Hiaasen joined the writing team at the Miami Herald when he was 23 years old, first as a staff reporter, then later on their award-winning investigative team. As his novels became best-sellers, he decided to cut back to writing a weekly column for the Herald, but he likes to joke in interviews and on his personal website about how he has “pissed off just about everybody in South Florida, including his bosses,” most of whom he has outlasted at the Herald.
This aspect of his professional life shows up in several of his novels, including Tourist Season, Skin Tight, and Basket Case, which feature slightly washed-up, burned-out and otherwise cynical retired investigative journalists who have gotten involved, usually against their will, in cleaning up the dirt in some local Floridian scandal. As Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes commented after an interview with Hiaasen, “Whether he's writing fiction or journalism, Carl Hiaasen's main character is always Florida.” When I picked up Scat to enjoy for a little summer reading, I expected a book about kids helping get to the bottom of an environmental scandal in their area of Florida, the same structure Hiaasen used in his first two books for young adults – Hoot, which won a Newbery Honor Award and was made into a movie; and Flush – my personal favorite.
Certainly, Scat is standard Hiaasen fare, but I was so pleased and surprised to find how the elements of this Hiaasen novel, in particular, dovetail the experiences many kids in this area are having right now. Every day, our children are hearing about gas drilling, oil companies, corporate greed, protecting the environment, state game lands, fathers and friends’ fathers in the National Guard, or off on a tour of duty in the Middle East. Furthermore, although Scat follows the saga of the endangered Florida panther, this panther is a relative of the cougar, the mountain lion that folks around here love to talk about. It was so easy for me to put myself in the shoes of Nick, the main character in Scat, and his mom, and his best friend, Marta.
Although Nick and Marta and their classmates find their teacher Mrs. Starch more than a little strange, Nick is glad for her yearly field trip to the Everglades, for he desperately hopes to get a glimpse of the majestic, elusive, powerful Florida panther. When Mrs. Starch disappears after the field trip, most kids at the Truman School rejoice, but Nick and Marta grow suspicious. And, in Hiaasen’s world, curiosity doesn’t usually kill the cat. In fact, in this story, curiosity may be the cat’s saving grace.
Curious scat or serious scandal? Email your thoughts to Hobo at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com. Miss a past column? Track them down at Hobo’s book blog, http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com. For another great book with a yellow cat on the cover, check out Hobo’s book, Hobo Finds A Home, free in every box of Hobo breakfast cereal.
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