Hoot tells the story of how Roy, Beatrice, and Mullet Fingers saved a group of owls from having their habitat destroyed by a construction project. The story is told from a third person perspective; however, the narrator is not completely omniscient. The slightly limited narrator is needed for a couple of reasons. One reason is that the book is somewhat of a mystery, as well as a police procedural.

In order to enhance the mystery of who Mullet Fingers is and exactly what the bad guys are up to, the narrator's perspective needs to be limited. This forces the narrator to tell readers about events as they happen. This puts most of the story in a chronological telling; however, the narrator clearly shows readers every once in awhile that they knows quite a bit about certain characters; the narrator will digress into small flashbacks that help develop a character.

As a police procedural story, the narrator will also occasionally break the pure chronological story telling style to flashback minutes or hours in order to show readers what was happening at the same time as events that were just narrated about. Chapter 12 is a good example for this, because readers see that Roy, Beatrice, and Mullet Fingers are in the hospital together. The chapter takes a momentary flashback break to explain how Roy's parents showed up at the hospital.