The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Kelly Barnhill)

The Girl Who Drank the Moon
Kelly Barnhill
Algonquin Young Readers
Fiction, MG Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: For countless generations, the people of the Protectorate have lived under a fog of sorrow, between a deadly forest and the endless Bog. Only the elders and the Sisters of the Star defend them from the evil Witch - and only the life of a child, the youngest in the village on the annual Day of the Sacrifice, can keep the wicked woman at bay. Or so the stories say... but stories are that most peculiar of things that can tell both a lie and a truth.
Xan doesn't know why the people keep abandoning babies in the woods every year, but she makes sure to reach them before any of the forest animals can, feeding them starlight to make them strong and bringing them to the Free Cities beyond the woods - which are not cursed, but troubled by an ill-sleeping volcano whose last eruption destroyed the wizards' enclave and all but one of the world's dragons. The last Witch, she lives in a small hut by the bog with her chickens and goats, not to mention the pocket-sized dragon Fyrian (who is convinced he is Simply Enormous) and the giant swamp being Glerk (who may be slightly older than the world itself.) She never thought to keep a child for herself, until she found the baby girl with the crescent moon birthmark on her forehead... and until she accidentally fed the girl moonlight instead of starlight. The moon is pure magic, as everyone knows, and a girl with that much magic in her can't be raised by just anyone. But there are consequences to every action, even acts taken out of love... just as there are wounds that can linger for centuries before threatening the whole of the known world.

REVIEW: The Girl Who Drank the Moon is part fantasy, part fairy tale, and part cautionary tale about the dangers of both love and sorrow. Though a middle-grade title, the story turns out to be not so much about Luna as it is about Xan, the origins of the Protectorate, and the true source of the sorrow that fogs the skies and hearts of the town, not to mention the dangers and hopes of growing up and growing old and the slippery nature of memory. Stories told in interim chapters contain bits of truths and bits of fabrication; the more one reads, the more one can see the roots of the tales, often twisted around by time and forgetting. Barnhill creates some great characters and imagery, from Fyrian the self-delusional dragon to the nameless madwoman and her paper birds to the well-meaning young man Antain... many colorful threads coming together for a climax that is both expected and unexpected. I came close to trimming a half-star for the ending, bits of which felt a trifle scattered and inconclusive, plus a late veering toward the borders of religious territory. On the whole, though, it's an imaginative fairy tale with some nice tooth under the initial simplicity.

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