The Girl Who Drank the Moon

Kelly Barnhill

Ages 9 to 12
24 August 2017
9781848126473
416 pages

Synopsis

THE NO 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER

'This beautifully written, darkly funny coming-of-age story will enchant and entertain' Daily Mail

Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the Forest, Xan, is in fact a good witch who shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon. Xan rescues the children and delivers them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey.

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 emerge - with dangerous consequences. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Deadly birds with uncertain intentions flock nearby. A volcano, quiet for centuries, rumbles just beneath the earth's surface. And the woman with the Tiger's heart is on the prowl . . .

The Newbery Medal winner from the author of the highly acclaimed novel The Witch's Boy.
A fairytale with a difference, this is about finding your power and what is means to belong, captured in a richly textured prose in a beautifully realised fantasy world.
Impossible to put down . . . The Girl Who Drank the Moon is as exciting and layered as classics like Peter Pan or The Wizard of Oz
A gorgeously written fantasy about a girl who becomes "enmagicked" after the witch who saves her from death feeds her moonlight.