"The Girl Who Drank the Moon" by Kelly Barnhill

“Knowledge is power, but it is a terrible power when it is hoarded and hidden.”

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (2016)

"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 kind and gentle. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster named Glerk and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, Fyrian. Xan rescues the abandoned children and deliver 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 enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. To keep young Luna safe from her own unwieldy power, Xan locks her magic deep inside her. When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge on schedule--but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her--even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she’s always known."

Fanart from @betsybauerart on Instagram

For my representation of witches and children's literature and cartoons, I wanted to pick a title I had sitting on my shelf at home. The Girl Who Drank the Moon is a young adult/middle-grade fantasy novel (ages 8-12) that my sister actually bought to read a few years ago. I never dove into it myself, and I had no idea it was about witches and magic until beginning this research.

The book was wildly well-received, scoring 4.15/5 stars on Goodreads, and garnering glowing reviews from The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, and other independent blogs and BookTube pages.

"The babies [in the story] are collected by a good witch named Xan, who carries them to a happier city with waiting families... Unlike the morose children in the town, the babies thrive and their eyes sparkle. It is an exquisite metaphor for the benefits of love and compassion," (NYT).

In a unique twist on the negative stereotype of witches stealing innocent children, Xan is actually a rescuer of these infants, alleviating their sorrow and delivering them to a more joyous life free from corrupt elders. Despite the elders being fully aware that the legend of the witch being evil and killing the children is untrue, they utilize it as a tool to control the people of The Protectorate and blame the witch for everything. Much like the scapegoat notion we've discussed in class, it's easier to point fingers at the evil witch as the source of suffering than for the elders to take responsibility and ethically govern the town. People believe the legend. They believe in fear, and they allow their false fears to rule them. (Witch craze, much?)

Xan is depicted as a brave caretaker, and in fan art, she varies in terms of appearance but maintains a motherly, elderly posture toward Luna.

“A story can tell the truth...but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed.”

The Girl Who Drank the Moon fan art by Ellen Kim
Ignatia (far left), Luna (middle), and Xan (second from the right)

The witch Xan has a unique origin story. "Xan is not a witch by birth, as she was an orphaned child who was found by a magician and raised with them; they experimented on her, causing her to become magical." At great cost to herself, Xan seeks to protect Luna from the evil Ignatia by taking Luna's magic until she turns 13. However, the closer Luna gets to that birthday, the weaker Xan becomes, and eventually, her death is hinted at near the finale of the story. 

Witches in Britches, a podcast duo, took a deep dive into the book. Their goal is to read texts through a feminist lens and engage critically with the content and its relationship to the world around it. Episode 1.7 is focused on The Girl Who Drank the Moon, and from minute 3:38 to 12:15, the hosts discuss a segment they call "Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?” 

Plot twist; there is actually a good witch (Xan) and a bad witch (Ignatia), but the townspeople's perceptions of them are reversed. Ignatia, the Sorrow Eater, literally feeds off of sorrow, and it is revealed that she was the one who started the tradition of sacrificing children to force more sorrow upon the town. Driven by the loss of her own lover, she forces herself to survive on sorrow because she cannot fathom another way of living. Interestingly enough, the herb ignatia is used in homeopathy to treat symptoms of depression and anxiety in real life. 

"The chief action of this remedy revolves around mental symptoms and ‘loss.‘ It works very well in cases of depression along with sadness caused by a recent event. The person needing this medicine shows a desire for loneliness and may have weeping spells."

The podcast essentially arrives at the conclusion that the book displays a great range of female characters, both witchy and otherwise because regardless of the actions of both witches, we as readers grow to understand their motivations and flaws, allowing to audience to judge for themselves who is truly good and who is simply sorrowful.

I think this book is incredibly interesting in its nuances and its focus not just on Luna and her development but also on the competing morals of the magical women who influenced the course of her life. It's an expansion on the witch lore we've grown to understand in class and makes the focus of the book the controlling (and freeing) power of stories. As we know, the narratives we tell about witches determine our perception of them, and I believe this young adult novel is helping to create new ideas about witches and feminine power for girls today.