In the author note in the back of this book, a NYT critic is quoted as saying, “It should be said: Kevin Henkes is a genius.” The critic was referring to Henkes’ work in picture books, which includes the Caldecott Award winning Kitten’s First Full Moon and the popular Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse. If we’re talking picture books, I might have to agree with the NYT critic.

However, I found the middle grade fiction title Bird Lake Moon to be slow-moving, like wading through molasses, and rather odd. Told in alternating points of view, by Mitch, whose parents are planning a divorce, and Spencer, whose parents are trying to decide whether eight years have healed their grief enough for them to return to the summer home where their oldest son drowned, the book tries to picture the potentially disastrous consequences of lying and deceiving a friend and at the same time the bittersweet, grown-up feeling of harboring secret knowledge that even the adults don’t have.

So strike one, it’s a Divorce Book. I know Divorce Books are necessary, but I don’t usually like them very much. Strike Two, it’s a guy book in which nothing much really happens. Guys tend to like action. Strike Three, well, I don’t really have a strike three, but what does happen in the book is fairly realistic, but not very novelistic, if you know what I mean. If not, chalk it up to the influence of this strangely out-of-sync novella.

The novel was odd, as I said, and it gave me a creepy feeling while I was reading it. If some kids, or adults, like it and get something out of it that I didn’t, more power to them. I’m just not thinking it lives up to the genius billing.