{"id":4429,"date":"2018-07-13T17:50:09","date_gmt":"2018-07-13T07:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=4429"},"modified":"2018-07-13T17:50:09","modified_gmt":"2018-07-13T07:50:09","slug":"girl-who-drank-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=4429","title":{"rendered":"GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?attachment_id=4431\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4431\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4431\" src=\"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/moon_20180703_0001.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"775\" srcset=\"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/moon_20180703_0001.jpg 500w, https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/moon_20180703_0001-194x300.jpg 194w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a>Kelly Barnhill\u2019s <em>The Girl Who Drank the Moon<\/em> was winner of the Newberry Medal in 2017. Here\u2019s what the blurb on the back says.<\/p>\n<p><em>Every year the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as a sacrifice to the witch that 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 babes 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, who she calls Luna, as her own. As Luna\u2019s 13<sup>th<\/sup> birthday approaches, her magic begins to emerge \u2013 with dangerous and thrilling consequences.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is, apart from anything else, a fabulous demonstration of world-building. I have this issue with some fantasy stories \u2013 and my husband laughs at me \u2013 I call it the \u201cmarket garden problem\u201d. When we watched the Lord of the Rings movie, I objected to Rohan, the home of the horse lords. It sits right in the middle of nowhere \u2013 and there appeared to be no market gardens. So where did they get their vegies from? In this book, though there are many magical elements, everything makes sense. There are (so to speak) market gardens. The witch Xan and her friends are strong and lovable characters; Luna is a gifted, exasperating, loving heroine; the large cast contains some memorable villains. This story brought tears to my eyes (which doesn\u2019t happen very often), made me laugh and kept me guessing. There are multiple plot-lines that twist and twine and eventually all come together in a surprising and satisfying finale. A coming-of-age story that talks about good and evil, love, family, belonging and growing up and growing old. Beautiful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kelly Barnhill\u2019s The Girl Who Drank the Moon was winner of the Newberry Medal in 2017. Here\u2019s what the blurb on the back says. Every year the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as a sacrifice to the witch &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=4429\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4432,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429\/revisions\/4432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}