(Barnhill, Kelly) Kelly Barnhill is the author of four novels, most recently The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Algonquin Young Readers), winner of the 2017 John Newbery Medal for the year’s most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. She is also the winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Parents’ Choice Gold Award, and the Texas Library Association Bluebonnet Award, and has been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the NCTE Charlotte Huck Award, the SFWA Andre Norton Award, and the PEN/USA literary prize. In The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Xan the witch is feared, but nobody knows she is secretly a compassionate protector. 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. 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.
