Hoot - Children's Book & Feature Film

Hoot, by Carl Hiaasen, was published 2002. In this story, Roy Eberhard is the new kid in town. His family has just made their sixth move in eight years, this time to sunny Coconut Cove in Florida. Within days of starting school, Roy attracts the attention of the school bully, Dana Matherson, who especially delights in torturing Roy on the bus ride to school. One particular morning, as Roy's face is being pressed into the school bus window, he spots a mysterious running boy. Roy cannot help himself from wondering about the boy, also known as Mullet Fingers, and eventually decides to track him down. The only person standing in Roy's way is Beatrice Leep, a tough soccer jock with a major attitude, who also happens to be the mysterious running boy's step-sister. Eventually, Roy finds himself befriended by both Beatrice and her step-brother. And, before long, the three of them are smack dab in the middle of a political scandal involving a protected species of burrowing owls and a major pancake corporation.

In 2006, this book was turned into a feature film. Whenever a popular book is turned into a movie I am curious to see how it turns out. In this case, I truly enjoyed it because there were only a few differences; the overall story did not change. For example, the actors who portrayed the characters Curly and Beatrice, were different in the film than the book. In the book, Curly is fat, bald and dimwitted. In the movie, he was skinny and loud. The character Beatrice, as she is written in the book, is brutish-looking and bully-like. However, in the movie she is tough but attractive.

There are other differences between the book and movie. In the book, Roy is hit on the head with a golf ball while trying to track down the running boy. In the movie, he is hit by a golf ball on two different occassions. In the book, Beatrice bites through Roy's bike tire to give him a flat, but in the movie she give him a nail to flatten the tire. In the book, Mullet Fingers sleeps in an abandoned ice cream truck, but in the movie he stays in an abandoned boat.

Perhaps the ending includes the most obvious differences. In the book, Mullet Fingers buries himself up to his neck in one of the burrows inhabited by the owls to stop the pancake company from breaking ground, but in the movie the three main characters just stand in front of the plow. Also, in the movie, Mullet Fingers actually captures and ties up an executive from the pancake company. However, this scene was not included in the book at all.

Overall, the storyline of the movie stayed relatively close to the one in the book. The differences, while they were evident, were still subtle.

References:

Hiaasen, C. (2002). Hoot. New York: Random House Children's Books.

Amazon. (2008). Hoot. Retrieved on April 7, 2008, from http://www.amazon.com/Hoot-Newbery-Honor-Book-Hiaasen/dp/0375821813

Shriner, W. (Director). (2006). Hoot. [motion picture]. United States: New Line Cinema.