Bird Lake Moon
-
- $7.99
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
Told in alternating voices, this smart and engaging middle grade novel from the beloved Kevin Henkes is the story of two boys coming together in friendship as they struggle with family conflicts and tragedy.
There are ghosts at Bird Lake, and they're haunting Mitch and Spencer. Not the Halloween kind, but ghosts of the past. Memories of how life was before—before the divorce, before the accident. Can their ghosts bring Mitch and Spencer together, as friends? Or will their secrets keep them apart?
Mitch feels isolated at his grandparents’ house and can’t help hating his father, who walked out on him and his mom two and a half weeks earlier. Spencer’s family has decided it’s finally time to return to Bird Lake, years after his brother, Matty, drowned there. Both boys arrive at the lake scarred and fragile, but as they become friends, the sharp edges of their lives smooth out and, slowly, they are able to start healing.
“Superbly crafted. A ‘must have’ for every library.” —School Library Journal (starred review)
“In a novel as tender as his acclaimed Olive’s Ocean, Henkes probes the psyches of two boys facing family conflicts.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a novel as tender as his acclaimed Olive's Ocean, Henkes probes the psyches of two boys facing family conflicts. Spending long, lonely days at his grandparents' lakeside home, 12-year-old Mitch Sinclair has plenty of time to brood about his parents' impending divorce and to plot against the family of intruders who have moved into his favorite spot, the house next door that he assumed was abandoned. What Mitch can't know is that the newcomers have been shaken by tragedy, the drowning of a child in the lake eight years ago, and their stay is destined to be short-lived. Mitch becomes friends with 10-year-old Spencer Stone, the elder of the surviving children, and as trust builds between them, the boys risk exchanging their family secrets. Tranquil Bird Lake serves as an effective setting for this reflective novel, with Henkes alternating between Mitch's and Spencer's points of view. The most remarkable aspect of the book may be the author's ability to isolate the sources of the boys' shared sense of loss and then to express, via easily recognizable and even ordinary experiences, their growing acceptance of what cannot be changed. Ages 10-14.
