Thanks to my local librarian, I took out three books on tape for our two grandchildren, ages 10 and 13 and us to listen to on two days of travel to Mount Rushmore and back to Denver.
What a surprise when, after the grandkids nixed the first two choices, settled on The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill and narrated by Christina Moore. I had never heard of this book and relied on the librarian's recommendation. She told me the book had won several awards, most notably the Newberry Medal which didn't help much since the illustrations were not a part of the CD.
I was very nervous when we first started listening, but the children had no trouble getting into the story. When the word magic first appeared and they were introduced to volcanoes and dragons and stars and moons, they were immediately hooked. It took me a while longer. There were eight discs and 46 chapters and in segments of two and three hours, we all listened to the story unfold of a town that every year sacrificed the youngest child born to be taken to the woods and left abandoned with the threat of the entire town being extinguished if this yearly act did not take place. The threat came from a supposed witch who the town had come to believe controlled the world. We were then transported to the forest where a good witch took the abandoned children, i.e. the "star children," and placed them in kind homes, but the witch accidentally transported her powers to one of them who she kept and nurtured and "emagicked." The witch was friends with all kinds of monsters including a tiny dragon. In contrast members of the town who live under constant threat suffer individually, especially the mother of one of the abandoned children. In the end, after considerable efforts on the part of all, there is resolution, but not without plenty of time to enjoy life and love and magic amidst fears and anxieties.
Along the way, we all offered theories on how the story would end. And at the end, we all decided on who were our favorite characters.
What made this story so appealing, besides the talented interpretation of the narrator (how her voice kept all those characters going was amazing) was the author's ability to keep changing scenes and keep making us guess what would happen next, but also her vivid depiction of the characters. I'm not sure the message of the importance of freedom and individual choice comes through to the little listeners, maybe it does subliminally or it will later on. Regardless, to have a book that is well crafted and thoughtful and has a good message is all that one can hope for. It's true that I'm a classics person and would have preferred if we could have listened to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Treasure Island or the Arabian Knights, I now have great admiration for an author who can figure out how to capture the interest of today's kids who are so attracted to Harry Potter and Superheroes and who was able to write the way I think a good book should be written.
Thank you to my librarian. I so get what librarians are for.
