The Girl Who Drank The Moon By Kelly Barnhill
Paperback published by Piccadilly Press 24th August 2023
ISBN 9781848126473
Every year the people of the Protectors leave a baby as a sacrifice to the witch who lives in the forest. But the witch, Xan, is a kind one. She rescues the children and delivers them to the welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey.
But one year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. As Luna’s thirteenth birthday approaches, her magic begins to emerge with dangerous and thrilling consequences.
MY REVIEW
There is magic in starlight, of course. This is well known, Moonlight, however. That is a different story. Moonlight is magic. Ask anyone you like. I personally loved reading about a good witch.
The Girl who drank the Moon, is a middle grade rich fantasy tale about a good witch name Xan, that lived in the centre of a forest in a small unground swamp, covered with slick of slime. She is many centuries years old. Every year at a certain time, a mother from the Protectors left their baby in the forest, presumably to die. Xan the witch, would gather the abandoned infant in her arms, taking it to a safe place, that loved children. Within time Xan started to make the softest lambs wool blankets to wrap a child in to keep it warm and feed the baby with goats milk.
For middle grade readers that love to escape to a magical fantasy fiction, this is your next brilliant book to read!
Extract chapter 4.
In Which It Was a Dream
You ask too many questions.
No one knows what the Witch does with the children she takes. No one asks this. We can’t ask it don’t you see? It hurts too much.
Fine she eats them. Are you happy?
No. That’s not what I think.
My mother told me she eat their souls, and their soulless bodies have wondered the earth ever since. Unable to live. Unable to die. Blanked-eyed and blank-faced and aimless walking. I don’t think that’s true. We would have seen them, don’t you think? We would at least have seen one wander by. After all these years.
My grandmother told me she keeps them as slaves. That they live in catacombs under her great castle in the forest and operate her fell machine and stir her great cauldrons and do her bidding in the morning till night. But I don’t think that’s true, either, surely, if it was, at least one of them would have escaped. In all these years, surely one person would have found a way out and come home. So, no. I don’t think they are enslaved.
Really, I don’t think anything at all. There is nothing at all to think.
Sometimes. I have this dream. About your brother. He would be eighteen now. No. Nineteen. I have this dream that he has dark hair and luminous skin and stars in his eyes. I dream that when he smiles, it shines for miles around. Last night I dreamed that he waited next to a tree for a girl to walk by. And he called her name, and held her hand, and his heart pounded when he kissed her.
What? No. I’m not crying. Why would I cry? Silly thing.
Anyway. It was just a dream.
About author Kelly Barnhill
Kelly Barnhill is an author, teacher and mom. She wrote THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON, THE WITCH’S BOY, IRON HEARTED VIOLET, THE MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF JACK and many, many short stories. She won the World Fantasy Award for her novella, THE UNLICENSED MAGICIAN, a Parents Choice Gold Award for IRON HEARTED VIOLET, the Charlotte Huck Honor for THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON, and has been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the Andre Norton award and the PEN/USA literary prize. She was also a McKnight Artist’s Fellowship recipient in Children’s Literature. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her three brilliant children, architect husband, and emotionally-unstable dog. She is a fast runner, a good hiker, and a terrible gardener.
You can visit and chat at her blog:
Bookread2day 
Beautiful! One of the very best witchy books!
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