By Piranha T. 

​Deep in the forest, the sheltered Protectorate leaves the youngest baby in the town out in the woods every year, a sacrifice to the witch who lives in the forest, who it is said will destroy the village if the sacrifice is not appeased. When each child is taken into the woods, they leave sorrow them.

But despite what the people of the Protectorate believe, the witch who lives in the forest, Xan, is not only kind, but also has no inkling of why the children are left in the woods. Every year, she takes the children to the Free Cities across the forest, and, to nourish the babies on the long journey, she gathers starlight and feeds it to them.

One year, however, she accidently feeds the baby moonlight—filling the ordinary girl with boundless quantities of magic—and Xan decides she must bring the baby up in her cottage in the woods with the help of Fyrian, a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, and Glerk, a swamp monster with a deep love of poetry. The baby, whom she calls Luna, grows up with no knowledge of her magical potential, and as her thirteenth birthday draws nearer, her magic starts to emerge. And at the Protectorate, someone is putting a plan into action, to free the village from the witch once and for all…

The Girl Who Drank the Moon is an excellent book—it even won the Newbery Medal—and is a many-layered fantasy with magic and some funny parts, too. It is one of those books which you feel like everything works out perfectly, and all the little twists not only make sense, they make you feel ridiculous you didn’t notice them—they fit so perfectly. The characters are well-crafted and intriguing. This is an excellent book which I would highly recommend to all readers ages 10 and up looking for an excellent and well-written fantasy.

By Super Kitty

When eleven-year-old Gregor and his little sister Boots fall through a grate in their apartment’s laundry room, all Gregor can think about is getting him and his two-year-old sister back home as soon as possible. However, he swiftly discovers that that might not be as easy as it sounds—he has fallen into the Underland, a world miles beneath New York City and populated by giant cockroaches, spiders, bats, rats, and a race of people with translucent skin and violet eyes. Taken in by these people, who are called Regalians, Gregor soon learns that his only hope of getting home resides in a quest—to save the Underland, and perhaps to solve the biggest mystery of his life.

As the series progresses, Regalia teeters on the edge of a great war, the greatest, perhaps, that ​they have ever faced, and Gregor may be the only one who can ensure their victory. With the help of the young Queen Luxa, several valiant bats, a loyal cockroach, and many more besides, Gregor must, among other things, battle sea-serpents, survive an avalanche, and face the largest and most lethal rat of all as the stakes rise from getting back home to saving all that he holds dear.

​First of all, I would just like to say that you should not be put off by the giant spiders, rats, cockroaches, etc. While I don’t mind some of those creatures, I’m not entirely sure that my reaction to seeing a six-foot-rat would be terribly chivalrous. However, the series is brilliantly written, and despite my lack of enthusiasm for giant (or normal sized) cockroaches, I couldn’t put the books down. The characters felt real, and Gregor in particular was very relatable to. I’m about Gregor’s age, and I can say that his thoughts, mistakes, and general reaction to the Underland was very believable.

The Underland Chronicles do get dark in places, and there is some violence, so I would probably recommend them to ages ten and up. One thing that made a big difference to me, though, was that although there is some violence and battle scenes, Gregor really doesn’t believe in war, and sees it not as an unfortunate necessity, but as something that must be stopped. Also, none of the characters were evil death machines—they all had stories, and as a reader you could understand what made them what they were, even if you didn’t like them. I would recommend the Underland Chronicles to anyone looking for an engrossing, exiting, and impossible-to-put-down series.
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​​Note: In September 2016, I reviewed ​Gregor the Overlander, ​the first book in the Underland Chronicles. However, as our book reviews became more sophisticated , and I decided to update the review on what is still one of our favorite books!