About the Author

Robin McKinley has won various awards and citations for her writing, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown and a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword. Her other books include Sunshine; the New York Times bestseller Spindle's End; two novel-length retellings of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and Rose Daughter; and a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, The Outlaws of Sherwood. She lives with her husband, the English writer Peter Dickinson.

Reviews

“Takes us back to those wonderful first meetings between Robin Hood and his followers. So strong is the power of this story that it catches us all over again...[McKinley] richly restores the textures that time has worn to bare narrative threads.” –The New York Times

“In the tradition of T.H. White’s reincarnation of King Arthur, a novel that brings Robin Hood…delightfully to life!” –Kirkus Reviews

“McKinley’s taken the familiar high adventures and retold them with her unique talent…There’s plenty of action, but in this retelling, as in her first brilliant book Beauty, McKinley makes what was familiar and comfortable new and shining…[A] glorious romance.” –St. Petersburg Times

“Praiseworthy.” –The Washington Post

“A great read.” –Chicago Tribune

“Enriched with entrancing details of life in the forest, graced with a neat pair of satisfying love stories, and culminating in a couple of rousing battles, McKinley’s Robin should be delighting readers for years to come.” –Kirkus Reviews

Gr 9-12 Robin Hood is immortal, but in The Outlaws of Sherwood he doesn't quite come alive. McKinley's novelistic treatment expands the outlines of characters and episodes familiar to readers of Pyle. All is well in the Greenwood until the outlaws open their mouths: their speech and thoughts are a stiff, uneasy mix of ye-olde high seriousness and flip vernacular. McKinley's attempts to evoke the 12th-Century conflict with her wish to raise her characters' political and feminist consciousness do not work. The book moves slowly: there is action, but not enough for the sword-and-sorcery genre addicts; the romance between Robin and Marion hangs fire while he figures out that he can't tell her what to do; the dialogues are sometimes unwieldy and un-yeomanlike; the whole is unconvincing. Pyle's text may be stilted, but there are his wonderful pictures; even Roger Green's version (Penguin, 1984), albeit for a younger audience, has the merit of good pacing. Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, Seattle

"Takes us back to those wonderful first meetings between Robin Hood and his followers. So strong is the power of this story that it catches us all over again...[McKinley] richly restores the textures that time has worn to bare narrative threads." -The New York Times

"In the tradition of T.H. White's reincarnation of King Arthur, a novel that brings Robin Hood...delightfully to life!" -Kirkus Reviews

"McKinley's taken the familiar high adventures and retold them with her unique talent...There's plenty of action, but in this retelling, as in her first brilliant book Beauty, McKinley makes what was familiar and comfortable new and shining...[A] glorious romance." -St. Petersburg Times

"Praiseworthy." -The Washington Post

"A great read." -Chicago Tribune

"Enriched with entrancing details of life in the forest, graced with a neat pair of satisfying love stories, and culminating in a couple of rousing battles, McKinley's Robin should be delighting readers for years to come." -Kirkus Reviews