A Rollicking Tale: Author Carl Hiaasen Talks 'Scat'

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CARL HIAASEN IS best known for his rollicking, Florida-set, eco-furious thrillers, but he's also a successful children's author, winning a Newbery Honor for 2002's "Hoot." He's back with his third book for young readers, "Scat," a, well, rollicking tale that touches on the vanishing Sunshine State panthers, oil-drilling and the Iraq war.

» EXPRESS: Why did you start writing for kids?
» HIASSEN: It wasn't my idea. Several years ago, an editor contacted me and asked if I would like to do kids' books. I laughed and said, "You haven't read my grown-up books; you wouldn't want to put the children of America at risk."

But my stepson was 11 and nieces and nephews were the same age — too young to read adult novels but clamoring to. I thought maybe you can have a book with the same irreverence as my other novels that they could love, but not worry about content. That's why I wrote "Hoot."

» EXPRESS: How was making the transition?
» HIASSEN: I wanted to tell stories in the only voice I know — my own. It became a question of taking myself back to when I was 12 and putting myself in that frame of mind.

The nice thing about having the characters be kids is that they come to the story with so much less baggage than grown-ups. I don't have to spend a lot of time on the back-story explaining as much about an eighth-grader as a 60-year-old guy who lives in the swamp and eats roadkill.

» EXPRESS: What about Florida is inspiring?
» HIASSEN: It's the only place I've ever lived, so I'm not qualified to write about anywhere else. It's a place where material never runs dry — not a day goes by that a news story doesn't fit somewhere in a novel. The sheer volume coming out of Florida is a blessing for a journalist and novelist.

» EXPRESS: What prompted including your eco-friendly point of view in this story?
» HIASSEN: That's what my other two books for kids are, so it's nothing new. The degradation of the planet as seen in Florida is dramatic. In "Scat," you have a magnificent creature in the Florida panther, and there are not many left. I grew up on the edge of the Everglades, and it would have been the highlight of my childhood to lay eyes on one.

» EXPRESS: You include another topical subject — the Iraq war. Talk about that.
» HIAASEN:For every American serviceman or servicewoman who comes home [injured], there are lots of people affected by what happened, and many, many kids. I don't know the last count of how many were injured in Iraq ... but multiply that by the number of children. It's happening in homes all over the country, so I thought it deserved a mention.

» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Fri., 10:30 a.m., free; 202-364-1919, politics-prose.com. (Van Ness-UDC)

» Barnes & Noble, 4801 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda; Fri. Jan. 30, 7 p.m., free; 301-986-
1761, (Bethesda)

Written by Express contributor Amy Cavanaugh
Photo courtesy Tim Chapman