(3.8 / 5)
The Girl Who Drank the Moon is a solidly good middle grade book that is full of appeal, if not life changing. This book is packed full with life truths about love, loss, grief, ignorance, hope, and endurance. Its quite amazing now that I think about it in retrospect but this little book had a lot to say about some pretty heavy topics.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon is about a town who lives in fear of the witch that haunts their local woods. To appease the witch and keep her from their door they offer up the youngest baby each year as tribute. The practice is heartbreaking but saves the town from otherwise sure destruction. Meanwhile this same witch travels to the offering place each year to rescue the “abandoned” baby and deliver it to a town and family on the other side of the woods who will love and care for the child. To sustain the infants on the long journey the witch feeds them starlight, but one year she makes a mistake and feeds the baby moonlight, which as everyone knows is undiluted magic. The story then follows the lives of the witch, the infant (who grows into a little girl and then teenager), the mother who lost her infant, and a local town boy who played an unwilling role in the offering up of the child.
The story is about the perpetual nature of life and how sorrow and grief can make or break the human spirit. It was a lovely little story but I couldn’t lose myself in it. The climax was a little underwhelming and I felt the author took on too much, or tried to do too much-but the message was beautiful and the characters were charming.
Ultimately it was a couple of things that contributed to my lack luster experience. 1. I just wasn’t in the mood for this kind of a book when I picked it up, but library deadlines wait for no one and it was either now or who knows when. 2. I was expecting something fantastic from a Newberry Award winner and this book has gotten a lot of hype recently. It’s always difficult to go up against really high expectations. Under different circumstances I could see myself liking this book a lot more.
Violence: Low Language: None Adult Content: None