Hoot
Roy Eberhardt is the new kid--again. This time around it's Trace Middle  School in humid Coconut Grove, Florida. But it's still the same old routine:  table by himself at lunch, no real friends, and thick-headed bullies like Dana  Matherson pushing him around. But if it wasn't for Dana Matherson mashing his  face against the school bus window that one day, he might never have seen the  tow-headed running boy. And if he had never seen the running boy, he might never  have met tall, tough, bully-beating Beatrice. And if he had never met Beatrice,  he might never have discovered the burrowing owls living in the lot on the  corner of East Oriole Avenue. And if he had never discovered the owls, he  probably would have missed out on the adventure of a lifetime. Apparently,  bullies do serve a greater purpose in the scope of the universe. Because if it  wasn't for Dana Matherson...In his first novel for a younger audience, Carl Hiaasen (Basket Case, etc.) plunges  readers right into the middle of an ecological mystery, made up of endangered  miniature owls, the Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House scheduled to be  built over their burrows, and the owls' unlikely allies--three middle school  kids determined to beat the screwed-up adult system. Hiaasen's tongue is firmly  in cheek as he successfully cuts his slapstick sense of humor down to kid-size.  Sure to be a hoot, er, hit with middle school mystery fans. (Ages 10 to 15)--Jennifer Hubert