Squirm

by Carl Hiaasen

Overview

A wildly entertaining adventure involving snakes, grizzlies, a menacing drone, a missing father, and the kid determined to find him. In classic Hiaasen fashion, the animals here are wild, and the people are wilder!

Some facts about Billy Dickens:
  *  He once saw a biker swerve across the road in order to run over a snake.
  *  Later, that motorcycle somehow ended up at the bottom of a canal.
  *  Billy isn't the type to let things go.
Some facts about Billy's family:
  *  They've lived in six different Florida towns because Billy's mom insists on getting a house near a bald eagle nest.
  *  Billy's dad left when he was four and is a total mystery.
  *  Billy has just found his dad's address—in Montana.

This summer, Billy will fly across the country, hike a mountain, float a river, dodge a grizzly bear, shoot down a spy drone, save a neighbor's cat, save an endangered panther, and then try to save his own father.

"A fun romp that will keep readers hooked." —The New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593177679
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	03/10/2020
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	66,814
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	740L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 12 Years

About the Author

CARL HIAASEN was born and raised in Florida. He writes a column for the Miami Herald and is the author of many bestselling novels including Bad Monkey, Razor Girl, and Squeeze Me. 

His books for younger readers include the Newbery Honor winner Hoot, as well as Flush, Scat, Squirm, and Chomp. Skink—No Surrender was Hiaasen's first book for teens and features one of his most iconic characters, the reclusive ex-governor of Florida now known as Skink. 

You can read more about Hiaasen's work at carlhiaasen.com.

Hometown:

Tavernier, Florida

Place of Birth:

South Florida

Education:

Emory University; B.A., University of Florida, 1974

Read an Excerpt

This one kid, he got kicked out of school.

That’s not easy to do--you need to break some actual laws. We heard lots of rumors, but nobody gave us the straight story.

The kid’s name was Jammer, and I got his locker.

Who knows what he kept in there, but he must’ve given out the combination to half the school. Kids were always messing with my stuff when I wasn’t around.

So I put a snake inside the locker. Problem solved.

It was an Eastern diamondback, a serious reptile. Eight buttons on the rattle, so it made some big noise when people opened the locker door. The freak-out factor was high.

Don’t worry--the rattlesnake couldn’t bite. I taped its mouth shut. That’s a tricky move, not for rookies. You need steady hands and zero common sense. I wouldn’t try it again.

The point is I didn’t want that rattler to hurt anyone. I just wanted kids to stay out of my locker.

Which they now do.

I set the diamondback free a few miles down Grapefruit Road, on the same log where I found him. It’s important to exit the scene fast, because an adult rattlesnake can strike up to one-half of its body length. Most people don’t know that, and why would they? It’s not a necessary piece of information, if you live a halfway normal life.

Which I don’t.

“What does your dad do?”

I hear this question whenever we move somewhere new.

My standard answer: “He runs his own business.”

But the truth is I don’t know what my father does. He sends a check, Mom cashes it. I haven’t seen the guy since I was like three years old. Maybe four.

Does it bother me? Possibly. Sure.

I’ve done some reading about this, how it can mess up a person when his parents split, especially when one of them basically vanishes from the family scene. I don’t want to be one of those screwed-up kids, but I can’t rule out the possibility.

Mom doesn’t say much about Dad. The checks always show up on time--the tenth of the month--and they never bounce. We might not be rich, but we’re definitely not poor. You wouldn’t believe how many pairs of shoes my sister owns. God, I give her so much grief.

The way I look at it, Mom doesn’t get a free pass just because she doesn’t want to talk about my father. That’s not what you’d call a healthy, open approach to an issue. So I stay on her case, though not in a mean way.

“What does he do for a living?” I’ll say, like I’ve never asked before.

“Well, Billy, I’m not exactly sure what he does,” she’ll begin in the same tight voice, “but I can tell you what he doesn’t do.”

Over time, based on my mother’s commentary, I’ve scratched the following professions off my Phantom Father list:

Astronaut, quantum physicist, lawyer, doctor, heavy-metal guitarist, veterinarian, architect, hockey player, NASCAR driver, jockey, plumber, roofer, electrician, pilot, policeman, car salesman, and yoga instructor.

Mom says Dad’s too claustrophobic to be an astronaut, too lousy at math to be a quantum physicist, too shy to be a lawyer, too squeamish to be a doctor, too uncoordinated to play the guitar, too tall to be a jockey, too hyper for yoga, and so on.

I don’t like this game, but I’m making progress, information-wise. Mom’s still touchy about the subject, so I try to take it easy. Meanwhile, my sister, Belinda, acts like she doesn’t care, like she’s not the least bit curious about the old man. This fake attitude is known as a “coping mechanism,” according to what I’ve read.

Maybe my father is a psychiatrist, and one day I’ll lie down on his couch and we’ll sort out all this stuff together. Or not.

At school I try to keep a low profile. When you move around as much as my family does, making friends isn’t practical. Leaving is easier if there’s no one to say goodbye to. That much I’ve learned.

But sometimes you’re forced to “interact.” There’s no choice. Sometimes staying low-profile is impossible.

The last week of school, some guy on the lacrosse team starts pounding on a kid in the D-5 hallway. Now, this kid happens to be a dork, no question, but he’s harmless. And the lacrosse player outweighs him by like forty pounds. Still, a crowd is just standing around watching this so-called fight, which is really just a mugging. There are dudes way bigger than me, major knuckle-draggers, cheering and yelling. Not one of them makes a move to stop the beating.

So I throw down my book bag, jump on Larry Lacrosse, and hook my right arm around his neck. Pretty soon his face goes purple and his eyes bulge out like a constipated bullfrog’s. That’s when a couple of his teammates pull me off, and one of the P.E. teachers rushes in to break up the tangle. Nobody gets suspended, not even a detention, which is typical.

The dorky kid, the one who was getting pounded, I didn’t know his name. The lacrosse guy turns out to be a Kyle something. We’ve got like seven Kyles at our school, and I can’t keep track of them all. This one comes up to me later, between sixth and seventh period, and says he’s going to kick my butt. Then one of his friends grabs his arm and whispers, “Easy, dude. That’s the psycho with the rattler in his locker.”

I smile my best psycho smile, and Kyle disappears. Big tough jock who likes to beat up kids half his size. Pathetic.

But lots of people are terrified of snakes. It’s called ophidiophobia. The experts say it’s a deep primal fear. I wouldn’t know.

During seventh period I get pulled out of class by the school “resource officer,” which is what they call the sheriff’s deputy who hangs out in the main office. His name is Thickley, and technically he’s in charge of campus security. He’s big and friendly, cruising toward retirement.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Squirm"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Carl Hiaasen.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

…a fun romp that will keep readers hooked…Perhaps best of all is the way Hiaasen conveys the wonders of wild creatures, from the "skittish and solitary" behavior of panthers to the unusual nesting habits of swallows. Don't be surprised if after reading Squirm, your young reader tells you the safest way to handle a yellow rat snake or scare off a grizzly.

The New York Times Book Review - Catherine Hong

08/13/2018
The focus of the latest eco-adventure by Hiaasen (Chomp) is not an endangered animal but an elusive one: Billy Dickens’s absent father. When Billy was three or four, his dad disappeared, though support checks still arrive monthly. Billy’s mother, a bird lover, moves him and his older sister every few years so she can live within 15 minutes of an active eagle’s nest. She’s an otherwise responsible party, but she aggravates Billy in one other way: she refuses to share information about his father’s whereabouts. Billy pieces together his dad’s address in Montana after fishing bits of an envelope from the trash, and he uses his mother’s credit card to book a flight there from Florida. (Mature beyond his years, he leaves a check from his own savings to cover airfare.) In Livingston, Billy meets his father’s new wife and his stepsister, both members of the Crow Nation, and becomes embroiled in his father’s well-intentioned but dangerous attempts to protect wildlife from trophy hunters. Billy is an admirable kid with deeply improbable snake-handling abilities, and the story never quite fulfills the promise of singularity offered in the opening scene, wherein Billy keeps people out of his school locker by placing an Eastern diamondback there. Ages 8–12. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"A fun romp that will keep readers hooked." —The New York Times

"Humorous, self-deprecating narration and convoluted exploits will keep pages turning till the satisfying close." —Kirkus Reviews

"Hiaasen’s latest is richly steeped in the natural world and all the peril it contains, from rattlers to grizzlies. Still, what may be most satisfying for readers are the personal connections Billy makes, whether it’s getting to know his new stepsister or making peace with his dad." —Booklist

"Hiaasen’s ecological passion shows no sign of abatement, and neither does his faith in kid resourcefulness and family resilience." —Bulletin

"An entertaining, pulse-pounding story."— The Horn Book Magazine

"Terrific characters and ingenious, fast-paced storytelling." —The Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Hilarious, heartfelt and delightfully surprising." —The Times Herald

From the Publisher

2018-05-28
Billy Dickens is not the kind of kid who suffers bullies or poachers or absent parents.Billy's dad left when Billy was 3. Checks arrive on the 10th of every month, but Billy's mom destroys the envelopes to keep the return address from Billy. Shortly before summer vacation, Billy pieces one together and discovers his father's in Montana, so he leaves Florida to find him. Billy's tired of his mother's evasiveness about his father—all he knows is that he's got a new wife and family—and Billy's ready for answers. In Montana, Billy meets Lil, his stepmother, and Summer, his stepsister, both members of the Crow Nation. But not his dad. Lil and Summer profess to know as little as his mother about his dad's actual job, but they don't mind having Billy wait with them for him to return (they even give him a little primer on U.S.-Native Nations relations). When his father's truck is found abandoned with slashed tires, they get a message via drone: "See you in Florida." Billy's had enough. He tracks his dad down, but that turns out to be just the beginning of his adventure. Hiaasen's newest wildlife-centered caper for middle graders is characteristically entertaining—and, just as characteristically, genially improbable. Narrator Billy's white, a sarcastic outsider with a strong sense of justice and a deep affection for snakes. Humorous, self-deprecating narration and convoluted exploits will keep pages turning till the satisfying close. (Fiction. 9-14)

Kirkus Reviews