Chomp
by Carl Hiaasen
Published by Knopf Books for Young Readers
on January 1, 2012
Genre: Middle-Grade, Realistic Fiction
Length: 290 pages
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Literary Awards:
Florida Book Award for Young Adult - Silver (2012)
Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award for Grades 6-8 (2014)
Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Nominee (2014)
Alabama Library Association Children's Book of the Year Nominee for 4-5 (2014)
Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award Nominee (2016)
Synopsis:
The hysterical #1 New York Times bestseller from Newbery honoree Carl Hiaasen featuring gators, snakes, bats that bite, and reality show hosts gone wild!
When Wahoo Cray's dad--a professional animal wrangler--takes a job with a reality TV show called Expedition Survival!, Wahoo figures he'll have to do a bit of wrangling himself to keep his father from killing Derek Badger, the show's inept and egotistical star. But the job keeps getting more complicated: Derek Badger insists on using wild animals for his stunts; and Wahoo's acquired a shadow named Tuna--a girl who's sporting a shiner courtesy of her father and needs a place to hide out.
They've only been on location in the Everglades for a day before Derek gets bitten by a bat and goes missing in a storm. Search parties head out and promptly get lost themselves. And then Tuna's dad shows up with a gun...
It's anyone's guess who will actually survive Expedition Survival...
When Wahoo Cray's dad--a professional animal wrangler--takes a job with a reality TV show called Expedition Survival!, Wahoo figures he'll have to do a bit of wrangling himself to keep his father from killing Derek Badger, the show's inept and egotistical star. But the job keeps getting more complicated: Derek Badger insists on using wild animals for his stunts; and Wahoo's acquired a shadow named Tuna--a girl who's sporting a shiner courtesy of her father and needs a place to hide out.
They've only been on location in the Everglades for a day before Derek gets bitten by a bat and goes missing in a storm. Search parties head out and promptly get lost themselves. And then Tuna's dad shows up with a gun...
It's anyone's guess who will actually survive Expedition Survival...
My Thoughts:
Carl Hiassen has been on my radar for a few years now and I'm surprised that it wasn't sooner considering that I grew up in Florida. I've been eager to read something by him and especially wanted this cover with the alligator to take on my nature hikes around Florida that sometimes do include gator sightings. All for bookstagram, of course.
I took this book on my first outdoor adventure of the year, reading it when I could catch a minute and was hooked from the start. Chomp is a 'real Florida' kind of story. It's full of gators, snakes, coons, snapping turtles, and many more critters that roam the wilds here. It's set near Florida City, Florida, in the Everglades where both alligators and airboats are abundant.
The story starts out introducing us to Wahoo and his father, Mickey Cray, who spent his life wrangling critters and housing them in his own little sanctuary. They occasionally rent the tamer wildlife out to film companies so when an agent for Expedition Survival! contacts them offering big bucks to allow their wilderness survival show host, Derek Badger, to swim with their fourteen-foot alligator, they agreed. Alice the alligator is an angel after all. What Wahoo and Mickey Cray don't know beforehand is that the famous Derek Badger has no real experience with wild animals or being in the wilderness. Chaos ensues, of course.
I feel like this is the most accurate depiction of Florida that I've ever encountered in literature. The stereotypes are actually pretty spot on. If you've ever heard of 'Florida Man' you may know what I'm alluding to here. The 'southern' hillbilly, redneck, wildlife wrangling, airboat driving, gun-toting kind of fellas. Of course, Florida is a bastion of these stereotypes but it's also a giant melting pot of people and cultures and 'bluebirds' from other states who make Florida their second home and spend weeks or months at a time escaping winter or whatever they're running from.
A lot of people have experienced at least a little bit of Florida but I still encounter quite a few that only know about its beaches and Disney World so I'm glad there are books that show more of unadvertised Florida.
This was a fun middle grade read with a lot of humor and importance that I would love to see more of. I'm definitely looking forward to diving Hiaasen's other novels soon!
I took this book on my first outdoor adventure of the year, reading it when I could catch a minute and was hooked from the start. Chomp is a 'real Florida' kind of story. It's full of gators, snakes, coons, snapping turtles, and many more critters that roam the wilds here. It's set near Florida City, Florida, in the Everglades where both alligators and airboats are abundant.
The story starts out introducing us to Wahoo and his father, Mickey Cray, who spent his life wrangling critters and housing them in his own little sanctuary. They occasionally rent the tamer wildlife out to film companies so when an agent for Expedition Survival! contacts them offering big bucks to allow their wilderness survival show host, Derek Badger, to swim with their fourteen-foot alligator, they agreed. Alice the alligator is an angel after all. What Wahoo and Mickey Cray don't know beforehand is that the famous Derek Badger has no real experience with wild animals or being in the wilderness. Chaos ensues, of course.
I feel like this is the most accurate depiction of Florida that I've ever encountered in literature. The stereotypes are actually pretty spot on. If you've ever heard of 'Florida Man' you may know what I'm alluding to here. The 'southern' hillbilly, redneck, wildlife wrangling, airboat driving, gun-toting kind of fellas. Of course, Florida is a bastion of these stereotypes but it's also a giant melting pot of people and cultures and 'bluebirds' from other states who make Florida their second home and spend weeks or months at a time escaping winter or whatever they're running from.
A lot of people have experienced at least a little bit of Florida but I still encounter quite a few that only know about its beaches and Disney World so I'm glad there are books that show more of unadvertised Florida.
This was a fun middle grade read with a lot of humor and importance that I would love to see more of. I'm definitely looking forward to diving Hiaasen's other novels soon!
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