Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm)'s Reviews > The Girl Who Drank the Moon

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The people of the Protectorate leave a baby deep in the forest each year, a sacrificial offering made to a witch to deter her from terrorizing the village. When the witch, Xan, finds the babies, she feeds them starlight, but one year she accidentally pulls light from the moon and enmagicks a baby girl. Xan knows that the baby imbued with moonlight will have extraordinary abilities, so she decides to raise the child. As the child grows, she lacks the skill to control her evermore erratic magic, and her thirteenth birthday approaches - a day when her magic threatens to emerge in full and with dangerous consequences.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon is a shining example of a good ol' fashioned fairy tale, replete with witches and dragons and creatures from the bog, along with enchanted objects, talking animals, and villainous monsters.

The setting is moody and atmospheric, be it the fog-riddled village populated with sorrowful people or the treacherous forest said to have taken the lives of travelers who stumbled into its boiling streams or choked on the foul-smelling fumes spewed from its fissures.

Fog clung to the city walls and cobbled streets like tenacious moss.

At the center of the forest was a small swamp - bubbly, sulfury, and noxious, fed and warmed by an underground, restlessly sleeping volcano and covered with a slick of slime whose color ranged from poison green to lightning blue to blood red, depending on the time of year.

Because this is a multigenerational saga, the cast of characters is relatively large, but each character brings their own quirks and idiosyncrasies to the page, making them easy to differentiate (though pinpointing a "main character" is a bit of a grey area).

The best part of the book - the succulent cherry on top of this decadent treat - is the way magic is used or emerges by accident. Magic is portrayed as being whimsical and sweet, familiar yet fresh. Some forms of magic are playful in their innocence, while other forms rely on the exchange of a sinister currency that is disturbing to read about whenever it's employed.

She transformed a book into a dove and enlivened her pencils and quills so that they stood on their own and performed a complicated dance on the desk.

As [she] ran, each footstep blossomed with iridescent flowers. When she waded into the swamp, the reeds twisted themselves into a boat, and she climbed aboard, floating across the deep red of algae coating the water.

The story is fairly complicated for a middle grade novel and some elements are disquieting; the book is subsequently recommended for a slightly older audience (ages 10 to 14).

With luscious prose, a winding plot, and a charming cast of characters, The Girl Who Drank the Moon makes a proud addition to the list of Newbery Medal winners.
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This book will likely appeal to fans of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede, The Mermaid's Sister by Carrie Anne Noble, or Stardust by Neil Gaiman.