The Girl Who Drank The Moon, by Kelly Barnhill, reviewed by Sarah Hammond

I intended to review another book for my post today, but once I read the first pages of The Girl Who Drank The Moon, I was side-tracked. Perhaps entranced. 

This fast paced, middle grade fantasy deftly weaves together multiple storylines as a girl brimful of moonlight and magic, an ailing witch, a scar-faced carpenter, a swamp monster poet, a madwoman and a tiny dragon are pit against a magician who cultivates and feeds on sorrow. By the time I finished reading, I felt as if I, too, had swallowed a little starlight. 

Each year, in order to appease the Witch, the youngest baby in the Protectorate is left for her in the forest by the Elders. ‘Sacrifice one or sacrifice all’ say the sorrowful people. Or so they have been led to believe. In fact, the Elders encourage this practice to keep their people frightened, sad and compliant. Yet, this, we learn, is not the full story either. For there is a Witch in the woods, but she is perplexed by the annual baby-leaving rituals. Xan is kind and chooses not to judge. Rather, she takes the abandoned babies and gives them to caring families on the other side of the forest, sustaining them en route with starlight. 

One day, however, Xan makes a mistake. Instead of feeding the latest baby starlight, she feeds her moonlight. “There is magic in starlight, of course. This is well known. Moonlight, however. That is a different story. Moonlight is magic. Ask anyone you know.” 

Xan calls the 'enmagicked' baby Luna, decides to keep her and become her grandmother. Yet as Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, when her magic will flow fully, other forces are at work. A carpenter enters the forest to hunt the Witch and stop the sacrifices. Luna’s mother, driven mad with grief, escapes to find her daughter. Xan goes to rescue the latest abandoned child. Her friends, the swamp monster and tiny dragon, follow Xan, worried about her deteriorating health. Fast-moving to the end, sorrow is defeated and love triumphs.

At one level, this is a gripping story with well-developed, memorable characters. Traditional fairytale motifs are woven inventively into the plot. Yet at another level, the poetic language, the hopeful and wise themes threading through the story hint at something deeper. Madness unlocks a way of discovering nuggets of magic in the world. One generation fills the next with magic as their own gently dwindles. Beyond death, there is nothing to fear. Beyond magic, there exists a oneness from the beginning of the world.

The Girl Who Drank The Moon won the Newbery Medal, 2017.

www.sarahhammond.org

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THE FEW by Cathy McSporran; reviewed by Gillian Philip

It's a little known fact (and new to me) that Winston Churchill was a bit of an occultist who consulted mediums and considered himself psychic. His belief in witches – and the rumour that he consulted them during the war – was the spark for Cathy McSporran's first Young Adult novel, The Few.

Maggie, the heroine of the story, is working with the Women's Land Army in the south of England – not just to help with the war effort, but to help her deal with her grief: Maggie and her younger brother witnessed their father's death at Dunkirk, in an incident that also uncovered the pair's latent supernatural talents. Maggie and Colin are soon recruited into a coven of young witches working for the British government; taken to London, they discover that their most dangerous enemies are a group of German teenagers with powers that mirror their own. These Gothi become even more lethal when one of their number succeeds in channelling the ancient Aryan goddess Freya.

Much of the story takes place under the (sometimes literal) shadow of the Battle of Britain, so the supernatural storyline is complemented by some thrilling air battles, as well as a touching romance between Maggie and one of the Spitfire pilots, Michal.

McSporran effectively weaves together history, real and fictional characters, and the mythologies of Northern Europe to create a spellbinding story that rarely lets up its pace. The tangled web of relationships – encompassing betrayal as well as fierce loyalty and dedication – feels real, and packs a considerable emotional punch by the conclusion. The Few is the first book in a series, and succeeds in giving the reader both a satisfying ending and an enticing hint of more adventures to come.

It can be a tough call to blend real history with mythic fantasy, but McSporran pulls it off with flair. The book itself isn't well served by its cover, but if you look beyond that you'll find a ripping fantasy that combines high-stakes world peril with emotional strength and subtlety.


The Few by Cathy McSporran; published by Freight Books RRP £8.99

www.gillianphilip.com




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Class Six and the Nits of Doom by Sally Prue. ...reviewed by Adèle Geras

I know I am always doing it: the very opposite of what you're supposed to do.  The etiquette is: you don't puff the work of your friends. Indeed, you go to great lengths to avoid mentioning it, lest you be accused of bias.

I'm quite happy to be accused of bias. I am biased in favour of those of my acquaintance who just happen to be good writers. Because I'm a writer, I have a lot of friends like this...and Sally Prue is one of them. I make a point of bringing their latest work to the attention of the wider world and I don't feel in the least guilty about it. I have, I promise you, a HUGE pile of stuff by people I know which I have no intention of reviewing. 

Sally Prue's little book needs  critical attention for two reasons. First, because it's good but more importantly, it's one of a specific kind of book which never gets noticed at all.  This is the small, not very flashy narrative for younger readers: the kind of thing you'd find in a classroom but not on the pages of the Sunday Times. 

These are often the books to which children have most access. They are short, which means that they're accessible at a time when readers need good meaty stuff to move them on to really demanding books. They must be simple without being stupid. This is not as easy to achieve as it looks.  It helps when there's an occasional line drawing to pull the child through the  story.  It helps greatly if they're funny. And if they're written by someone who takes as much care with every sentence as Prue does, then the readers are in luck and this slim volume will be excellent exercise for those parts of the brain that are needed to turn children into enthusiastic lovers of every kind of book.

 Class Six and the Nits of Doom.... an immediately interesting title...poses a what if which has probably often crossed the mind of disgruntled pupils: what if Miss is actually a witch? 
I'm not giving too much away when I tell you that this year,  in Class Six, Miss is not only a bona fide witch, but also one who doesn't limit herself to the more fluffy and child - friendly enchantments. On the contrary, these spells can be properly nasty and the way Class Six copes with them strikes me as admirably stoical. Not only that: whenever someone suggests getting adult help of some kind, his or her fellows say, to all intents and purposes, "Naah, don't bother, they won't believe us. "

So the pupils deals with this predicament as best they can. The dénouement, when it comes, is exactly right. But along the way there are the incidental delights of Prue's writing, which is both hilarious and quite sharp.  

Also, the fact that Class Six can be going through what it is going through while the rest of the school goes on around it unawares, says something quite profound about the way we deal with problems affecting our close neighbours but not ourselves ....this is something to go on thinking about when the fun and games are over. 

Whatever its deeper significance,  Prue has written a jolly good romp which moves at a cracking pace and those who've just begun to read fluently will love it.



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VERDIGRIS DEEP by Frances Hardinge: reviewed by Gillian Philip

So Frances Hardinge has the coolest style, especially when it comes to hats and gorgeous long coats. I was at the Fantasy WorldCon in Brighton last year when I met her. The convention happened to take place over the Halloween weekend, and Frances was laughing when she turned up one evening, because someone on the street had congratulated her on her Halloween costume. When she wasn't actually wearing one.

Hmm. I don't know; I think there's some kind of sorcery on the simmer here. Verdigris Deep was her second novel, and I picked it almost at random from her Amazon page because I was intrigued by the blurb: One evening, Ryan and his friends steal some coins from a well... Then the well witch appears, with her fountains for eyes and gargled demands. From now on the children must serve her – and the wishes rotting at the bottom of her well.

If you think it sounds as much like horror as fantasy, you'd be right, and yet there are moments of sinister comedy. Who'd have thought shopping trolleys could be sentient creatures of dread and terror? I was completely convinced, and I'll never pass the Tesco trolley stacks again without looking at them askance and wondering if they're watching me.

The witch at the bottom of the well is herself an extraordinary creation, seen initially in Ryan's visions after the three children steal her coins to pay for bus fare. She is introduced stealthily but horrifically: via Ryan's reflection in his own bathroom mirror, or in the eyes of a smiling model on an advertising hoarding. When the witch's true nature is at last revealed, there's something tragic about it despite the horror. She's doing what she was always meant to do, after all; but three twenty-first century children can't possibly have known just how deep a simple wish can go.

Ryan is the terrified, ultimately brave young hero, but his friends Josh and Chelle are if anything even more complex and engaging. All of them go through more changes than the reader expects, and they do so through challenges that are far deeper, darker and more twisted than they (or the reader) could foresee. Their happy expectations of being wish-granting Angels are gradually destroyed by the true natures of the wishes and the people who make them – and, of course, their own. Their peril lies as much within themselves as in the supernatural forces around them.

I never felt confident of a fully happy ending, and I feared most of all for Josh, who begins the story as the arrogant, charismatic leader of their small gang but falls apart, morally and psychologically, with every chapter. That genuine uncertainty is not too common in children's fiction, and it kept me reading into the small hours. (And no, I'm not going to tell you.)

It's a dark, intricate tale of fantastical but convincing danger, and it's written with stylish beauty, too. It's mysterious magic, is what it is.


Verdigris Deep by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children's Books, 2007), £6.99

www.gillianphilip.com




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Little Witches Bewitched, by Rhiannon Lassiter. Reviewed by Cathy Butler

Ever since Mildred Hubble first entered the portals of Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches in Jill Murphy’s The Worst Witch (1974), and no doubt for some centuries before that, the idea of being a witch has had a strong appeal for young girls. In a world where, both as children and as females, they might seem to have been dealt a particularly powerless hand, witchcraft offers a way to leapfrog their elders and brothers into a position of wielding secret power over people and things. With female superheroes still a rarity, the witch remains one of the few figures through which such desires can be played out. No wonder it remains the costume of choice for Trick-or-Treaters. 

To indulge the fantasy of power without responsibility is however a dubious prospect for those who wish children’s books to educate, or at any rate not deprave, their readers. It’s also a poor formula for fiction in general, which thrives on difficulty and conflict. Witches must encounter problems that are hard to solve, even with the aid of magic, and the best writers in this tradition are careful in defining the rules of the game. 

The latest contribution to this genre is Rhiannon Lassiter’s clever and engaging book, Little Witches Bewitched. Lassiter knows this territory well, and she is ingenious in her navigation of it in the five stories that make up this volume about two young girls, Dulcie and Verity, whose Halloween encounter with a witch leaves them with magical powers of their own. The two are very different characters: Dulcie, a privileged only child whose indulgent grandfather owns a castle, might not have encountered Verity, a far less confident girl used being dominated by her older sisters, had it not been for their accidental meeting during a Trick-or-Treating session, but they become allies and best friends with a speed of which only young girls are capable. During their first adventure they attempt to undo the spell that has turned them into witches, but manage only to reverse the spells that tranformed Verity’s sisters and Dulcie’s nanny into an Arabian prince, a fairy and a Snow Queen respectively at the same time. While the supporting cast forget their metamorphoses, Verity and Dulcie look forward to new adventure – with a confidence fully justified by events.

Along the way, the girls pick up male companions in the form of a ghost (borrowed from Dulcie’s grandfather) and a witch’s cat, and even indulge in a little time travel to the Elizabethan age. Perhaps my favourite joke is Shakespeare’s complaint that he is always being bothered by travellers from the future, but while such throwaway lines are there to be appreciated by adult readers the book is aimed squarely at Dulcie and Verity’s contemporaries. The girls are fascinated and excited by magic, but they know that it is only one element of their lives, to be balanced against the demands of family and friendship. Enchantment is likely to elude books that are in a perpetual state of fluster about magic, but it flees too from those that are too blasé. Little Witches Bewitched strikes a happy middle course, and I look forward to reading about Dulcie and Verity’s future adventures in practical magic.

Little Witches Bewitched by Rhiannon Lassiter
Published by Babel Library: £5.97 
ISBN: 1493661140
ISBN-13: 978-1493661145
Also available on Kindle: £4.99

Cathy Butler's latest book is Twisted Winter (A&C Black, 2013) - "A chilling collection of terrifying winter tales for the darkest nights."

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