Skink No Surrender

by Carl Hiaasen
Hennepin County Library audiobook 7 CDs
read by Kirby Heyborne
genre: YA realistic fiction

I like Hiaasen's books, but this one may have bugged me more than I enjoyed it . . . I feel as though I'm on a teeter-totter of opinion.

I liked:

• Skink - his personality, his backstory, his attitude. I loved him as a character!
• Nickel, Dime, and Penny for sibling character names
• environmental concerns and the plug for Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (which I've not read and is now on my reading list . . . I've been aware of it for four decades . . . )
• info on the ivory billed woodpecker, the "Lord God bird" . . . enough for me to look it up and learn even more!

Disliked:

• Malley. What an awful brat of a kid. 14 years old and just horrid. Not sure why Richard or her parents care about her so much . . . she didn't seem to have many redeeming qualities
• Richard and Malley together doing so many stupid things. Yes, we all do stupid things. We do proportionally more stupid things when we're teenagers. But still . . . argh! 

Mixed:

• The bad guy TC - his choices and actions . . . believable? Some of it. Listening, I thought about all the "Florida Man" humor on the internet . . . he's like a bad joke.  
• Skink honoring the real Talbot Chalk. Nice touch

Ultimately, I think Flush remains my favorite of his YA books. I was a bit shocked at the difference between Hiaasen's style for teens and for adults. Duh, right? He's a talented writer.

I just had to go back and fix three previous entries where I had labeled the author as "Hiassen" instead of "Hiaasen." Wow. Sometimes I'm efficient and sometimes I'm in too much of a hurry to pay attention.

Chomp

by Carl Hiaasen
Hennepin County Library audiobook 5 discs
read by James Van Der Beek
genre: YA humor

Louie and I enjoyed this on the way to and from the lake this past weekend! Hiaasen is such a wonderful author (though I like his adolescent fiction much better than his adult fiction).

Chomp is the story of animal wrangler Mickey Cray and his son Wahoo (named for a wrestler, not the fish). They take a job with a nature channel's reality show starring Derek Badger as a survivalist. Wahoo's classmate Tuna is on the run from her abusive father and joins up with the Crays. Down in the Everglades, chaos erupts and hilarity ensues. Very fun story!

Scat

by Carl Hiaasen
Hennepin County Library, audiobook 8 discs
read by Ed Asner
genre: YA realistic fiction, humor

At first I was excited that Asner was the reader . . . then I decided that while I enjoy his acting, I don't think he's a wonderful reader. The women sounded terrible and much of the text was flat. Oh well.

It's another fun environmental story set in Florida. The kids (Nick, Marta, and Smoke) are delightful! The educators are all horrid - what an embarrassment to the profession! When cruel Mrs. Starch takes the grade level to the Black Vine Swamp for a science field trip, a fire sends them leaving early. Only Mrs. Starch is missing. Mystery ensues.

At least now I've read it and can booktalk it better to kids.

(Above written 9/7/14. Below written 5/8/17.)

I got this because Louie and I had enjoyed Chomp so much (and I didn't immediately remember that I had already "read" it. Again, we did NOT like Asner's vocal work. Here's my ordering of Hiiasen's YA books from favorite to least (yes, I know there are others I've not yet read):

Chomp
Flush
Hoot
Scat

Flush

CMSW, paperback, 263 pages

I had to re-read this because it's been enough years that the details were fuzzy. I enjoyed it and even laughed aloud a few times! Noah and Abbey are a great brother-sister duo. Shelley and Grandpa Bobby add a lot of zest to this story of a family trying to bring a polluting casino owner to justice. I like this one better than Hoot!