The Girl Who Drank the Moon
By: Kelly Barnhill
Newbery Medal

This book is about a town, Protectorate, this town lives in fear of an evil witch in the forest. To keep the witch happy, the town gives up a newborn baby to her. Little do they know, this witch isn’t terrible at all. Her name is Xan, and she is very kind. Instead of sacrificing the babies, she cares for them and gives them to people on the other side of the forest to raise the children. The witch nourishes the babies during the travel to the other side of the forest with starlight.
Unfortunately, one year the with feeds one of the babies moonlight instead of starlight on their journey to the other side of the forest. This makes the baby far more magical than any other of the babies. Since Xan has done this, she decides that she can’t let another person raise this magical baby, so she raises her on her own and calls her Luna.
In the town of Protectorate there is a man named Antain, who is training to be the Grand Elder, but he doesn’t want to become Grand Elder because he doesn’t agree with the sacrifice of the babies. He becomes a carpenter and marries his wife and has a child. Only their child is the one to be given to the so called, evil witch. Antain decides that instead of giving up his baby he will do inside the forest to kill the witch.
Xan has grown weak as Luna is growing stronger, so Luna goes with her mother to get the Protectorate baby. Xan turns herself into a bird to fly and get the baby. On Antain’s way to hunt the witch he hears something, and shoots. He shoots down the bird, Xan, injuring her wing. A madwoman (Luna’s real mother) also goes into the forest finding where they live, using some of there magical shoes to swiftly run about the forest.
Xan, Luna, Antain, and the madwoman end up meeting in the forest. Here they share all of there stories. Xan is crushed to hear that she hasn’t been saving babies, but rather taking them from their families. After everyone talks and tells there stories, they must choose between sorrow and love as a volcano might destroy the places that they love.

This book was amazing to read, I enjoyed it from the very start. Obviously by pure size this book is mostly for older children around 4th-9th grade. The author does a wonderful job of getting you wrapped up inside the story once you pick the book up. I also really like that this book had a beautiful ending, rather than a sad and broken one like many other novels that I’ve had the joy of reading. Instead of being sad that the book was over I was relieved that everything turned out well, and I don’t get that feeling often. 

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