The Missing Manatee

A tribute to Florida, fishing, and family

All Skeet Waters wants is to catch a big, beautiful tarpon on his fly rod - and to keep everything else in his life in Florida the way it's always been. But on his spring break from school, Skeet overhears his mother telling his father to move out permanently. Then, while riding in his boat to escape his parents' troubles, he discovers a manatee that's been shot in the head. Skeet puts aside his search for the manatee and its killer when Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man offers to take him out to catch his first tarpon on a fly. Because of Dan, Skeet begins to unravel the mysteries surrounding the manatee's apparent murder and his parents' dissolving marriage.

Skeet discovers that life is a lot like tarpon fishing, in which you can't look just at the surface of the water - you have to look through it, at what lies beneath.

The Missing Manatee is a nominee for the 2006 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery.

While coping with his parents' separation, eleven-year-old Skeet spends most of Spring Break in his skiff on a Florida river, where he finds a manatee shot to death and begins looking for the killer.

A tribute to Florida, fishing, and family

All Skeet Waters wants is to catch a big, beautiful tarpon on his fly rod - and to keep everything else in his life in Florida the way it's always been. But on his spring break from school, Skeet overhears his mother telling his father to move out permanently. Then, while riding in his boat to escape his parents' troubles, he discovers a manatee that's been shot in the head. Skeet puts aside his search for the manatee and its killer when Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man offers to take him out to catch his first tarpon on a fly. Because of Dan, Skeet begins to unravel the mysteries surrounding the manatee's apparent murder and his parents' dissolving marriage.

Skeet discovers that life is a lot like tarpon fishing, in which you can't look just at the surface of the water - you have to look through it, at what lies beneath.

Kathleen Isaacs - Children's Literature

Driving his skiff out into the Gulf of Mexico to avoid thinking of his parents' impending breakup, eleven-year-old Skeet Waters discovers a dead manatee, a protected species. When he investigates further, and thinks he has discovered who shot it, he has a difficult choice to make. How could it be Dirty Dan, his former hero, his grandmother's old friend who took him out tarpon fishing, with a lure, and worked with him until he got one? And if he reports Dirty Dan, what will happen to his retarded son, Blink? Skeet would like things to be as they have always been. But life gets complicated, as his grandmother, Memaw, says. This sparkling senior citizen, winner of a local karaoke concert, nearly walks away with Skeet's story; he is certainly lucky to have her advice and the model of her enthusiasm for life. Like the menu in the Chinese restaurant they visit, life involves choices. For Skeet, untangling the question of right and wrong is much more difficult than solving the mystery. Clearly set on Florida's Gulf coast, and smoothly told, this suspenseful story will leave middle grade readers much to think about. 2005, Farrar Straus and Giroux, Ages 9 to 12.

Cynthia DeFelice has written many popular novels for young readers, including The Ghost of Cutler Creek and Under the Same Sky. She lives in upstate New York.