By Kelly Barnhill
A witch accidentally feeds a baby moonlight and fills her with magic, in a world where a town leaves a child in the forest every year out of fear.
Every year the people of the Protectorate leave a baby in the forest as a sacrifice to the witch they believe lives there. But the witch, Xan, is kind, and she has been quietly rescuing those babies and carrying them to loving families in the towns beyond the woods. One year she accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the child with wild magic, so she keeps her and names her Luna. As Luna grows, her magic grows dangerous, a sorrow-feeding villain watches from the town, and the truth about why the babies are given away at all begins to surface.
This is the summit of the shelf, the most beautiful and the most grown-up. For a Land of Stories reader ready to feel something deeper than adventure, it's a fairy tale that turns the usual story inside out: the 'wicked witch' is the loving one, and the real danger comes from the fear and lies of the town. Barnhill's writing is gorgeous, the kind that rewards reading aloud, and the pieces of the story lock together at the end in a way that stays with your child. It asks more of them than the other books here, and it hands back more too.