Robin McKinley

Biography

Robin McKinley was born as Jennifer Carolyn Robin McKinley on November 16, 1952 in Warren, Ohio. Her father William McKinley was an officer in the United States Navy and her mother Jeanne Turrell McKinley was a teacher. As a result of her father's changing naval posts, McKinley grew up all over the world, including in California, New York, Japan, and Maine. She was educated at Gould Academy, a preparatory school in Bethel, Maine. McKinley went on to attend college, first at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1970–1972. She finished her college education at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine and graduated summa cum laude in 1975.

Robin McKinley currently lives in Hampshire, England. Her husband was author Peter Dickinson; they were married from 1991 until his death in 2015. They had no children, though Dickinson had children from a previous relationship. McKinley has two dogs nicknamed Chaos and Darkness. Her "obsessions" include learning how to play the piano, horseback riding, gardening, cooking, and bell ringing.

Career

After graduating from college, she remained in Maine for several years working as a research assistant and later in a bookstore. During this time, she completed her first book, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast. It was accepted for publication by the first publisher it was sent to and upon publication immediately pushed McKinley to prominence. The book was named an American Library Association Notable Children's Book and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

Writing

Robin McKinley has written a variety of novels, mostly in the fantasy genre. Several of her novels are her own personal renditions of classic fairy tales with a "feminist twist". These retellings usually feature a strong female protagonist who does not wait to be rescued but instead takes an active role in determining the course of her own life. Beauty and Rose Daughter are both versions of Beauty and the Beast, Spindle's End is the story of Sleeping Beauty, and Deerskin and two of the stories in The Door in the Hedge are based on other folk-tales. Besides adapting classic fairy tales, McKinley wrote her own rendition of the Robin Hood story in her novel The Outlaws of Sherwood.

McKinley has written two novels set in the imaginary land of Damar, The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown. Her contribution to the Imaginary Lands anthology and the stories in A Knot in the Grain are also set there. She describes herself as a "scribe" and "Damar's historian", because the stories "happen to her" and she is only responsible for writing them down. The stories of Damar have been occurring to her since before she wrote Beauty, and The Blue Sword was intended to be the first of a series about this land.

McKinley's standalone novels include Sunshine and Dragonhaven.

The heroines in McKinley's books reflect certain qualities that she saw in herself as a young woman: clumsiness, plainness, bookishness, and disinterest in the usual social games that involve flirting and dating. She has said, "I didn't discover boys because they didn't discover me, and because their standards of discovery seemed to me too odd to be aspired to. They were the ones who got to have adventures, while we got to—well, not have adventures."

McKinley says she writes about strong heroines because she feels very strongly about the potential for girls to be "doing things", and she feels that the selection of fantasy literature featuring girls is scarce and unsatisfactory. According to biographer Marilyn H. Karrenbrock, "McKinley's females do not simper; they do not betray their own nature to win a man's approval. But neither do they take love lightly or put their own desires before anything else. In McKinley's books, the romance, like the adventure, is based upon ideals of faithfulness, duty, and honor."

Awards

Children's picture books

Adaptations

The Jungle Books

Rudyard Kipling wrote several short stories originally for magazines between 1893-1894, which were collected in The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895).

Tales from the Jungle Book (1985) is an adaptation by Robin McKinley, Illustrated by Jos. A. Smith. The short stories contained within were originally written by Rudyard Kipling and published in The Jungle Book (1894).

Contains:

Stand Alone Novels

Serial Novels

Damar

Short Stories set in Damar include:

Pegasus

Anthologies

Contents:

Collections

Contents:

Contents:

Tales of Elemental Spirits

Alternate name: Elementals: Water

Contents:

Contents:

Other collections to which she has contributed

Complete List of Short Stories

Collections

Book Introductions

Selected scholarly works about McKinley

Children's Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. Retrieved May 26, 2011.