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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSRichard Sloan lives in Loggerhead Beach, Florida, with his mom, an environmental lawyer, and his good-natured stepfather, Trent, who believes in Bigfoot. One moonlit night, while waiting on the beach for his fourteen-year-old cousin and best friend, Malley, Richard hears breathing from a marked turtle nest and pulls a striped soda straw out of the sand. A huge, bearded, one-eyed old man in a flowered shower cap bursts out of the mound. He is Clint Tyree, a former governor of Florida who vanished halfway through his term and now lives in the wild as a hermit called Skink, eating roadkill and lying in wait for a turtle-egg poacher. The next morning Richard learns that Malley is gone. She claims she flew to early orientation at a boarding school in New Hampshire, but she has really run off with an older man she met in an online chat room who calls himself Talbo Chock, a name that belonged to a young Marine killed in Afghanistan. Although Malley threatens to reveal a secret of his from a trip to Saint Augustine, Richard tells the adults, yet more than a week of police searching turns up little. When Skink reappears and offers to go find her, Richard lies to his stepfather and takes off with him, following Malley's phone calls and a clue about a rare woodpecker across the state toward the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida Panhandle.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Skink—No Surrender
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Skink—No Surrender. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a hermit wear turkey-vulture beaks in his beard, calling them "Kindred spirits"?
✓ Answer
Skink—No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen
In daylight Richard sees that what looked like broken seashells in Skink's patchy beard are really bird beaks. When Richard asks why, Skink answers with just those two words, and later, at Richard's suggestion, he removes them as carefully as delicate Christmas ornaments.
- First half
In what book does a boy re-create woodpecker hammering by tapping a bamboo reed on a dead palm?
✓ Answer
Skink—No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen
Richard's interactive science fair project on ivory-billed woodpeckers let people compare the hammering of ivorybills and pileated woodpeckers, and it won an honorable mention. Malley helped with the poster drawing and the habitat map, which is how her phone message about the bird could point him toward the Choctawhatchee River.
- First half
In what book does a girl fake choking on a Jolly Rancher while her cousin steals a skateboard deck?
✓ Answer
Skink—No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen
Richard finally confesses his Saint Augustine secret to Skink, explaining that the deck was exactly like one his father had. Skink tells him to go back and pay for it, calling it a moral instruction, and adds that guilt is a bear.
- Second half
In what book does a big bronze-shouldered bass rocket out of a river with a silvery spinner in its mouth?
✓ Answer
Skink—No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen
Richard is stalling to avoid a canoe ride with Tommy when a five-pound bass slams Skink's shiny spinner, a catch Richard calls an honest-to-God miracle. The fish becomes dinner, coated in cornmeal and pan-fried on the houseboat.
- Second half
In what book does a man pick leeches off his own face and pop them into his mouth like candy?
✓ Answer
Skink—No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen
Stuck in the houseboat cabin during a thunderstorm, Skink snacks on the leeches from his cheeks like junior Twizzlers. When Malley groans that it is incredibly gross, he shrugs and says, "Nourishment, child."
- Near the end
In what book does a surf-shop owner tell a boy, "You just forgot to pay before you walked out"?
✓ Answer
Skink—No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen
Richard earns exactly two hundred dollars washing cars and brings it to Kenny, his dad's friend in Saint Augustine, to pay for the skateboard he took. Kenny already knew, pointing up at a bubble-eye camera, and was sure Richard would come back, because he is Randy's son.
