Audience Pick!

Title: Scat
Author: Carl Hiaasen
Category: Fiction, Middle Grade
Rating: 2/5
Summary: Nick and Marta—not to mention everyone else at school—hate their biology teacher, Mrs. Starch. But when Mrs. Starch disappears during a school field trip and nobody seems all that concerned, Nick and Marta realize it’s up to them to find her.

Review: I liked Hoot and Flush, but I never really got into Hiaasen’s latest middle-grade novel. It could be that I’m getting pickier as I refine my YA-nnabe reading skills.

Things I didn’t like:

  • Flat characters—Nick never came to life for me, and Marta mostly just got on my nerves.
  • Melodramatic at times—A character gets hurt at one point and Marta’s response just made me roll my eyes. I’d quote it, but I don’t want to give away too much. It’s on page 337, if you want to look it up.
  • Weird not-a-romance—Something was going on between Nick and Marta that seemed like it was supposed to be about them realizing they liked each other. But it was so infrequently referenced and never resolved in any way that it was just…weird.

Am I being too picky? I’m sure lots of kids will read this book and enjoy it. But if I’m going to become a better writer, maybe this is the path I have to go down.

Here’s a small example of what bothered me, so you can decide for yourself. Nick is being questioned by a cop after Mrs. Starch disappears:

“Let’s go back to the day before the field trip,” said the deputy. “I want to ask you about something that happened in class between Mrs. Starch and a boy named Duane Scrod.”

Nick felt the muscles in his neck stiffen. “She pointed a pencil at him, and he bit it in half.”

“Didn’t he also threaten her?”

“What do you mean?”

The deputy said, “Some of your classmates remember Duane saying something like, ‘You’re gonna be sorry.’ And then Mrs. Starch saying, ‘Is that a threat?’ Do you recall such a conversation?”

Nick recalled it quite clearly. He also recalled worrying that [Duane] might be serious. Nick felt uneasy telling this to the deputy, because he couldn’t be sure what Duane Scrod had meant.

But Nick’s father had taught him to always be truthful, no matter now hard it might be.

Those last two paragraphs are what got to me. First of all, this extremely memorable kid-biting-a-teacher’s-pencil scene just happened a couple days and less than 50 pages before this point, so don’t tell me that Nick remembers it. And don’t tell me that Nick feels uneasy. Make me figure that out by what he says or does.

But the clincher is the last paragraph. If I’m being truthful, it makes me want to gag. On what planet do kids think like that?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

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