Winner of the 2017 Newbery Award The New York Times Bestseller An Entertainment Weekly Best Middle Grade Book of 2016 A New York Public Library Best Book of 2016 A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2016 An Amazon Top 20 Best Book of 2016 A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016 A School Library Journal Best Book of 2016 Named to KirkusReviews’ Best Books of 2016 2017 Booklist Youth Editors’ Choice to KirkusReviews’ Best Books of 2016
2017 Booklist Youth Editors’ Choice
Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the Forest, Xan, is kind. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon. Xan rescues the children and delivers them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey.
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 consequences. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Deadly birds with uncertain intentions flock nearby. A volcano, quiet for centuries, rumbles just beneath the earth’s surface. And the woman with the Tiger’s heart is on the prowl . . .
The Newbery Medal winner from the author of the highly acclaimed novel The Witch’s Boy.
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I bought this book for my daughters and discovered a wonderful tale for myself. It follows a young girl raised by a witch, a too-small dragon, and a swamp monster. It is a coming of age story as well as a story of a reckoning for humanity. A tale of how fear can be used to control. It is a beautifully written work that I highly recommend for any age.
Coming of age book, great characters, great for older elementary readers, young adult-adult. Set in a land full of lies and deception, a young girl escapes her fate by being crafty, things she thought were true..end up in smoke , relationships become very fluid. If you are looking for a book that is rather unique, this is it.
This reads like a fairy tale but is an original story. Luna is child filled with the magic of the moon and stars. The descriptions of how the magic affects the world around her, especially when she’s a little girl, are just delightful. Like any good tale, this one has very good and very evil characters. And as a bonus, it has a wonderfully clueless dragon.
The well deserved winner of the 2017 Newbery!
This is a story about a village who sacrifices children to a witch and the witch who takes these abandoned children and adopts them to families on the other side of the forest. Until one day, she accidentally feeds one of these children some moonlight and the child becomes magical. So she raises her herself.
Looking at my rating, I loved this book. It was darkly funny, gorgeously satisfying and the pages turned themselves.
The Girl who Drank the Moon is a book by Kelly Barnhill.
Every year, the people of the Protectorate — called The City of Sorrow by some — leave a baby in the woods to be sacrificed to the witch living there. But on the contrary, the witch, Xan, is a kind witch. She nourishes the babies with starlight and picks out familes for them from the other side of the woods, and they are called the star children.
One night Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight. The baby gets enmagicked, and Xan decides to raise the child, whom she calls Luna as her own. But as Luna’s thirteenth birthday approaches, her magic emerges, with both dangerous and thrilling consequences.
The book is unpredictable, entertaining and the plot was gripping and amazing fun.
I definitely recommend this book if you like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson or action-packed books.
Even though there is a twist of magic, the settings and actions always take you right into the book. You won’t be able to stop reading until the end. The ending of the book leaves you wanting more words to read.
A wonderful story with wonderful characters and a great representation of how important it is to be true to oneself. It had the usual trope of good defeating evil but the actual implementation was unique and a pleasure to read. My children and I loved it.
This was funny and quirky and beautiful and twisty and wonderful.
It shows how we’re all connected. How stories begin and why we should question authority. How strong a mother’s love is and the importance of found family and sacrifice and intention.
And OOOOOHHH THIS COVERRRR.
I crawled through this one to make it last longer.
It tells a beautiful story with an Adam Gitwitz-type of humor threaded in.
The descriptions make it feel like it’s illustrated.
Read this one and relish in its magic.
Like a magnet, the cover of THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON pulled me across the bookstore. The New York Times Book Review cover endorsement—“Impossible to put down,”—was no exaggeration. My husband and I read this Newberry Award-winning book out loud to each other, back and forth, on a road trip and we both loved it. So much so that we’re gifting the book to our adult son (another book lover) so he can enjoy it too. Take my word for it; this is not a book to pass up!
Wow! This book is amazing! I loved the central theme of it and how the main conflict was solved. The magical world the author created is mesmerizing. I am definitely going to re-read this book. It is that good!
THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON by Kelly Barnhill
I was listening to THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON on CD, but near the intense conclusion, I picked up the “tree book” to finish more quickly. Wow! A well-told story with excellent lessons: Standing up to evil rulers — a theme for our times, for all times? — joining with friends, facing fear, finding and supporting truth, with compassion toward others. It makes me wish I could drink some moonlight and be enmagicked, but my mortal, ordinary, storytelling self will have to do.
“A story can tell the truth . . . but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed.”
“Some of us choose love over power. Indeed, most of us do.”
“Xan was very good at making people feel better, having had five hundred years of practice. Easing sorrow. Soothing pain. A listening ear.”
“Everything you see is in the process of making or unmaking or dying or living. Everything is in a state of change.”
“Volcanoes erupt and the world changes. This is the way of things. But we can protect.”
“Not all knowledge comes from the mind. Your body, your heart, your intuition . . . Make bubbles.”
“It’s all the same . . The Beast, the Bog,the Poem, the Poet, the world. They all love you.”
“Reason, beauty, poetry, and excellent conversation were his preferred tools for settling disputes.”
This book is so magical and now my fave! So unpredictable and has so much suspense, especially in the end. The characters such as Luna, Xan etc. were so wonderful and this book tells a lot about love and the importance of family. The language is not too hard but may be hard for beginners. The good characters had flaws and the villains are humanized. This is the best book for middle-grade fantasy lovers.
Review by a 6th grader 🙂
When it comes to book recommendations, I always take them with a grain of salt. What might be magical and wonderful for one, might be lame and boring for another. So, when someone recommended The Girl Who Drank The Moon, I was hesitatingly hopeful.
And, it was wonderful. Sweet, yet profound. Childlike, yet complex. After the year I’ve had, my heart wasn’t quite prepared for it.
The Story
There is a witch in the woods and she demands a sacrifice of a baby every year or bad things will happen. Or, at least that’s what the people living in the Protectorate have been led to believe. They are only half right. There is a witch in the woods, but she is the embodiment of love and selflessness. Every year she collects these abandoned babies to prevent them from a more gruesome fate and every year she feeds them starlight until they shine before she finds them loving families on the other side of the forest.
Then, one day, she feeds one of these babies moonlight which gives them incredible magic. Xan, the witch, can’t stand the thought of giving this particular baby away and instead chooses to raise the baby as its grandmother. Back in the Protectorate, the mother of this child is so grief stricken that she goes quite mad and is taken into the Tower to be tended to by the benevolent sisters. She has magic as well, although in her mental state can’t quite understand what it is or what she can do with it.
Meanwhile, there is a boy, Antain, who is destined to be a part of the Council of Elders in the Protectorate, except he really would rather not. He was there the day that the child was taken. He watched the mother as she climbed into the rafters to keep her baby safe only to have it stolen from her anyway. The sight haunted him so much that when he grew older, he feels compelled to visit with the mother, if only to make sure she’s being well cared for. What Antain doesn’t know, is that there are darker forces at work that feed on the sorrow of the protectorate and it is those forces that demand the sacrifice.
As the child, Luna, grows, it’s clear that she has too much magic and too little understanding to use it safely. Xan is forced to lock the magic away until Luna turns thirteen and is old enough to learn how to use her magic for good. This comes with a terrible consequence, Xan starts to fade away and her own magic begins to dry up.
The story sweeps into a climax when Luna approaches her thirteenth year at the same time that Antain and his wife realize that their own child will be the one sacrificed to the witch. Antain vows to kill the witch, none other than the kind Xan, to save his child. The mad woman, also drawn to her child’s magic, escapes the tower to go find her. None of them are prepared to face the real villain, the one who has kept the Protectorate in sorrow, who is coming right on their heels.
My Review
I know I’ve said this before, but I adore a story with lovely language. The Girl Who Drank the Moon uses language in a way that’s both poetic yet simple enough to be accessible to all readers. The story itself is the same, while there are multiple storylines to follow, there’s never any question about what’s going on and why. Each point of view character has their own unique voice, and it’s very clear what the stakes are.
What I loved the most was that since the reader understands what’s happening so well, when all the pieces start falling together, there is a huge emotional rollercoaster of worrying about what might happen and how hard it will be for all the characters involved. When you can get behind a story enough that you start worrying for the characters, that’s when you know that you are well and truly immersed.
My Recommendations
For those of you who light a lighter fantasy with lots (I mean lots!) of heart and just a slight hint of dystopia, The Girl Who Drank the Moon is a great choice. There is no offensive language or any inkling of intimate situations, and while there is some peril, there aren’t depictions of violence. I’d recommend it for all readers ages 12 and up, and also younger readers who are okay with keeping track of multiple storylines.
I rate this book 5/5 stars for being lovely, well balanced, and made me feel all the feels.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon is a great book that has a wonderfully amazing and imaginative beginning, whose protagonist is this girl whose magic (usually identified as blue and silver, and silver and blue streaks) started to blossom.
This people of a city called the Protectorate believe that there is a witch in the woods who will torture and terrorize them unless given a sacrifice. Due to this belief, every year, the people offer a baby by stripping the newborn from its family and sending it off to the middle of a forest.
What the people don’t know, is that in fact the witch is a kind woman, who takes the infant so that they don’t end up in a wild creature’s stomach, and feeds them stars from the sky, which results in shiny skin (that us mere humans could only wish for) and the title “Star Children”.
But one night, the witch, whose name is Xan, feeds a child (who is given the name Luna) the moon instead of the stars (as she was tired), and the child becomes “enmagicked”.
But Luna’s magic becomes troublesome and a chore for everyone to handle (as in “everyone”, I mean the 2 other main characters: Glerk, a poetry-loving swamp monster, and Fyrian, a curious Simply Enormous Dragon by heart), but Xan remains patient.
Although, like, 5 years later she decides to put a spell on Luna, as her magic has gotten much too strong and unpredictable and dangerous, concealing her magic in a small seed in her head which would explode when she is 13 years old.
Now I’ll just sit here and question myself why I wrote a long summary instead of copying and pasting the real summary and getting on with reviewing the book.
Well, anyway, let’s get on with the review now that you have a teeny idea of what happens in the first few chapters.
It’s overall a really good book. However, If you’d ask me, it was the beginning, in fact, that was better than the end.
The plot is rushed in the last few pages, tying up loose threads with a simple paragraph or two, topped with a chapter explaining life after the climax.
Most of the characters are fully developed, and I’d say that Glerk, Fyrian, and Xan coming in a close third tied with Antain are the most developed characters with a set make-up.
Plus, the cover picture looked just beautiful.
The entire book was wonderful (minding the end). But the beginning especially was enchanting, and much more memorable than other beginnings I have ever read.
This book says the story of a brave girl
I love finding books that are sophisticated enough for me to enjoy that are also a delight for my kids. Mine loved this story, and it’s clear to see why. It’s fun, inventive, and it keeps things moving. (The beginning was a little slow, but not because nothing was happening… on the contrary, it’s that there’s SO much to learn before things come together.) If you like magic and far flung worlds, if you like “chosen ones” who aren’t really chosen… if you believe that the world is full of beauty and starlight, you’ll love the Girl Who Drank the Moon.
This book is “MG” as in, middle grade fiction. DO NOT FALL FOR IT! While it’s absolutely wonderful for children of all ages, it’s also beautifully written and engaging, and quite profound. Adult readers of fantasy and magical realism will not read this feeling like their out of their element. Read, read, read! It’s marvelous.
I liked this book a lot. It was fun and entertaining. Although it wasn’t much of a middle grade book, I still enjoyed it.
Read to my kids, one of our favorite books. Recommend to any age. Really amazing story
I always love the worlds where things are a little off. The evil in this book is so well developed. Very engaging story which oozes originality.