Denise

This is a good story for young environmentalists.  This book is about a boy who just moved from Montana to Florida.  He is picked on by a lot of people because he said he was born on a farm.  They call him Tex and cowgirl.  His real name though is Roy Eberhart.  One day on the bus he sees a boy about the same age as him, running away from the bus without any shoes on.  Roy becomes curious about the boy.  He looks for the boy in his junior high school but doesn’t see him.  Over the next few weeks he finds him again.  Roy runs off the bus, runs into a girl named Beatrice Leep and tries to chase him.  The boy is very fast though.  Roy can’t catch up to him.  The next day at school Beatrice confronts him about running into her yesterday.  She also tells him to mind his own business about the boy he saw running.  Over the weekend Roy goes into the woods he saw the boy go into and leaves a pair of shoes for him.  He was about to leave when there is a bag over his head.  The boy says for Roy to never come back again.  Roy agrees but the boy said to wait ten seconds before he takes the bag off his head to go home.  When Roy takes the bag off his head he doesn’t see the boy anywhere. He heads back home.            

Throughout all this there are strange pranks being played on a local construction site.  This site when finished will be a pancake house.  But the problem is there are tiny owls called burrowing owls living in the ground of the site.  The construction of the pancake site keeps having to be delayed because of the many pranks being pulled.  In the end Roy, Beatrice, and the boy team up to stop the construction and save the owls.             

Roy is a quiet by who is constantly being picked on for no reason.  Beatrice is a very strong girl who likes playing by her rules and no one else’s.  The boy is Beatrice’s stepbrother.  Beatrice calls him Mullet Hands because he can catch a very slippery fish called a mullet with his hands.  The reason he lives in the woods is because his mother (who hates him for no reason) sent him to a military academy and he sneaks out.  No one in the family knows he’s there except Beatrice but she swore she won’t tell.          

I recommend this book.  It is full of turns and twists and friendship and trust.  I liked this book because I love the environment.  I think this book represents a good viewing of people who think we should cut down all the trees and kill all the animals and then the people (like me) who try to stop people like this and bring them to justice.