The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

The Girl Who Drank the Moon is a Juvenile Fantasy written for ages 10 to 14. I will be reviewing this book in the category of Newbery Winner.

Xan, a 500-year-old witch, didn't mean to feed moonlight to the infant Luna, a baby abandoned outside the Protectorate walls. But she did, and Luna became enmagicked, and so begins the journey of two witches - one very young and one very old - who must discover who they are and free a city that has been enslaved by sorrow for far too long.

When I was a youth, I often felt out of place and misunderstood, and so I was drawn to stories about young girls seeking to discover themselves and to find their way in a world that did not welcome them. These books provided me with comfort and companionship. I choose to read The Girl who Drank the Moon because, after reading the book's summary, I suspected that I had found another literary kindred spirit for my younger self. Luna promised to be a young girl who was different, and her story promised adventure as an accidentally enmagicked girl was forced to save her found family, and in doing so find herself.

In this review I will be evaluating Plot, Setting, and Theme.

The Girl who Drank the Moon opens with the story of a witch who must be offered a sacrifice every year, or she will destroy the Protectorate. The sacrifice demanded is a baby, and the people of the protectorate do not think anything can be done to stop this wicked and heartbreaking tradition. However, the reader is immediately left wondering how to end the Day of Sacrifice. Barnhill answers this question by drawing on the experiences of multiple characters to tell a complete story. While the book is largely written with a third-person omniscient point of view, the chapters shift between multiple characters' perspectives, with each character revealing the answers they uniquely hold or uncover. Thus, very early in the novel the reader learns that the Elders in the Protectorate do not believe that there is a witch in the forest. These men perpetuate the Day of Sacrifice ritual only to preserve their powerful positions within the community. However, the story quickly surprises by revealing the forest witch, Xan, to the reader, while simultaneously making it clear that though the witch is very real, she is also very kind and has no idea why the people in the Protectorate abandon a baby in her forest every year. And so it goes on. Each new voice offers answers, but with those answers come new questions. Xan remembers her past, but not why she had locked it away from herself for so long. Luna, the abandoned child, learns about Star Children but does not understand that she is a Star Child herself. Luna's birth mother goes mad from her grief, but from that madness she discovers magic and learns how to starve the Sorrow Eater. But what, the reader is now wondering, is a Sorrow Eater? Thus, with each chapter, the reader discovers puzzle pieces that propel them towards an understanding of the Day of Sacrifice's origin and a confrontation with its architect. Each character's story brings a part, and it is only when these characters are physically brought together that the whole design of the Protectorate is revealed and unraveled. Only then is the Protectorate made free of its false history and the sorrow that has enslaved it for generations. The plot seems to propel itself effortlessly in this pattern of question, answer, question, so that I had trouble putting the book down. As a reader I needed to understand why the Day of Sacrifice existed and I needed to know what Luna, Xan, Antain, and Luna's birth mother were going to do to put an end to it.

Barnhill also expertly uses the setting to further enhance her novel. The world built in the novel rests on top of a dormant volcano. At the beginning of The Girl Who Drank the Moon the volcano is relatively quiet, and while it produces dangers that keep the people of the Protectorate from leaving the city, it does not pose an imminent threat. Likewise, at the beginning of the story Luna is given magic, but it is blocked by Xan and made inaccessible to her. In addition, the protectorate is shrouded in misery, but it is a misery accepted so completely that rebellion is unthinkable. And finally, Xan has hidden her own sorrowful past so well that she cannot fully remember it herself. These are static facts, dismal but unchanging. However, when Xan enmagicks Luna, she breaks this stasis. As Luna's magic and self-awareness grow, so does the volatility of the volcano. As Antain, goaded by his guilt over not objecting to the sacrifice of baby Luna, begins a rebellion in the hearts of the Protectorate's citizens, the volcano's violence grows. And, as Xan attempts to control Luna's magic, she is forced to reckon with the volcano's dangerous history and face its reawakening. Barnhill's steady increase in the setting's ferocity mirrors the growing conflict within the story and forces the characters to find a resolution before everything in their lives erupts.

Finally, while the book presents a surface theme of the power love and hope have to overcome sorrow, a more subtle theme is deeply embedded into the structure of the novel. While most of The Girl Who Drank the Moon is told along the timeline of Luna's life, there are short chapters placed throughout the book in which a mother is passing on the stories of the Protectorate to an unnamed child. She tells of the forest witch, how she steals children and curses the land, and how the Protectorate is doomed to scrape out a living at her mercy until the volcano they live on erupts and destroys them all. When questioned, the mother says "Yes, child. This is a true story. What other kinds of stories are there?" (Barnhill, 2016, p. 52). However, as Luna's story unfolds, the reader finds that, while the mother's tale contains hints of truth, it is greatly distorted from reality. The mother's story is not her own, but one constructed by the Sorrow Eater as a tool to keep the Protectorate's populace under her control. History has been distorted to serve the powerful. Choosing to include this contradictory narrative in her novel was a powerful decision. In doing so Barnhill highlights the power of storytelling, and how a story, true or false, can impact lives. This is relevant to young people who read The Girl Who Drank the Moon. It can teach them how to interact with the stories they are told by community leaders and can encourage young people to ask questions about their world and to discover truths for themselves. It can also help young readers to examine the stories they are tell themselves, and to see if those perceived truths cannot be rewritten into something better.

I deeply enjoyed reading The Girl Who Drank the Moon. It was thought-provoking, engrossing, and had a fulfilling conclusion in which each character's story was pulled together into an unexpected but satisfying whole.

Barnhill, K. (2016). The girl who drank the moon. Algonquin Young Readers.