Bird Lake Moon
When 12-year-old Mitch’s parents divorce, he and his mother go to spend the summer with his grandparents in their cottage on Bird Lake. Mitch feels angry, sad, and lonely, and he retreats into his imagination where he pretends the long-vacant cottage next door belongs to him. He sweeps the front porch, cleans out the bird bath, and carves his initials into the porch’s wooden railing. He even resolves to keep the splinter he gets from the railing so the house will be a part of him. Mitch’s future plans are disturbed, however, when another family shows up to spend a week at the cottage. From his position in the crawl space underneath the front porch, he learns that they own the house and he decides he will try to scare them away by making them think the house is haunted. What Mitch doesn’t know is that 10-year-old Spencer and his family haven’t been to the lake for years because it was the site of his older brother’s drowning when he was four and Spencer was just two. And every small thing Mitch does to make them think the house is haunted, Spencer reads as a sign from his dead brother. Masterfully told with alternating points of view, Henkes shows the developing friendship between two boys who are both withholding information from each other. Only the reader knows the full story, and the dramatic tension builds as each boy gets closer to finding out the truth. ©2008 Cooperative Children’s Book Center
CCBC Age Recommendation: Ages 9-12
Age Range:
Grades 3-5 (Ages 8-10)
Grades 6-8 (Ages 11-13)
Format:
Novel
Subjects:
Divorce
Families
Feelings/Emotions
Friendship
Grief and Loss
Truth and Lies
Vacations
Publishers:
Greenwillow, HarperCollins
Publish Year: 2008
Pages: 179
ISBN: 9780061470769
CCBC Location: Fiction, Henkes