Title : The Girl Who Drank the Moon
Author : Kelly Barnhill
Genre : Children Fiction/Fantasy
Rating : 8.2/10
‘There is magic in starlight, of course.
This is well known. Moonlight, however. That is a different story. Moonlight is
magic. Ask anyone you like.’
Every year the people of the Protectorate
leave a baby as a sacrifice to the witch who lives in the forest. But the
witch, Xan, is a kind one. She rescues the children and delivers them to
welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with
starlight on the journey.
But 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 enrage – with dangerous
and thrilling consequences...
The cover state
that this is a New York Times bestseller winner of the Newbery Medal 2017, and
I understand why it got the award.
The story is
great and sweet and warm. It teaches you about love, the true love of a family.
Even it reminds me of my family and my grand father, it also almost made me cry
nearing the end of the story. But no, I didn’t cry.
For a book without a single illustration
inside, it has a perfect amount of pages and easy to read. Even though it doesn’t
have a single illustration inside, I still enjoy reading it which is a positive
sign for a book (at least for me). The storyline is somewhat predictable, but
it’s light and still fun to read.
I like how
Barnhill write a naration about the legend of the witch told by a mother in
some chapters, give the readers some hints to solve the mistery by ourself.
Moreover, the book contain several beautiful poems which become one of favorite
parts of the book. Even though I didn’t quite understand the poem (because it’s
already hard to understand poem itself, moreover for a non english speaker like
me), but I just love reading such a beautiful phrases arranged into one, don’t
you?
Anyway, it also
has such a beautiful ending, because there is the part of the ending which is
happy and there is another part which is sad. It’s quite balanced if I must
say. But one thing I can assure you, the ending won’t leave you with question
mark about the unsolved mystery.