Flush

Even though I read Flush quite awhile ago I never got around to writing a review. When I went to the Maud Hart Lovelace web site to see who won the 2009 awards and saw that Carl Hiaasen's book had won, I felt bad I didn't have a review published. Flush is a book I recommend along with Hiaasen's other children's novel, Hoot because I enjoyed reading both of them. Hoot won the Newbery Honor in 2003. They are great mysteries and in both, the protagonist takes on a cause for the environment. In Hoot, I wish that Roy would have solicited the help of his classmates earlier on in his campaign to save the habitat of the endangered burrowing owl. (It could have been a really awesome Public Achievement project!)
In Flush, many of the adults in the story are so corrupt it gives Noah and his sister Abbey more of a challenge to help their father's cause. It is pretty scary stuff. The father is in jail (intentionally) for trying to deliver his own kind of justice to a casino on a boat business that is dumping their sewage in the Florida keys, Noah feels he needs to help him. And Noah has a very complicated and clever way to catch the law-breakers. You will not be putting this book down until you've finished!