Hoot Themes

Hoot follows middle school student Roy and his new friends, Beatrice and a boy known only as Mullet Fingers, as they work together to stop the Mother Paula’s All-American Pancake House corporation from building a new location in Coconut Cove, Florida. They do this because the vacant lot where Mother Paula’s plans to build is home to several nesting pairs of burrowing owls, which are endangered and are thus protected under state and…

There are two primary antagonists in Hoot: Dana, a bully who incessantly targets Roy, and Chuck Muckle and the Mother Paula’s All-American Pancake House corporation, which plans to build a new Mother Paula’s location on a vacant lot in Coconut Cove, despite sightings of protected burrowing owls on the lot. As Roy and his friends take on both Dana and Mother Paula’s, Hoot highlights how corruption and intimidation function, highlighting how money…

While Hoot’s main focus is on its young protagonists, it nevertheless offers readers glimpses into the role parents play in children’s lives. It’s possible to trace why Roy, Beatrice and Mullet Fingers, and Dana behave the way they do to how their parents support them (or don’t). The novel shows how present parenting prepares kids to tackle complex challenges while still giving them opportunities to be kids, while absent, neglectful, or abusive…

Even as Hoot illustrates how neglectful or absent parenting can hurt children and make their lives extremely difficult, it also shows that there’s an antidote to some aspects of questionable parenting situations. While Hoot doesn’t go so far as to suggest that having close friendships with peers is enough to totally remedy an unsupportive or dangerous situation at home, it does show that having a friend can make one’s home life more bearable and, in…