McKinley: Making good on a promise

Ok, I now you thought you'd never hear from me again, but I finally have an excerpt from the book "Presenting Young
Adult Fantasy Fiction" by Cathi Dunn MacRae. Sorry to have taken so long, but school was (unfortunately) a priority. The smaller bits pertaining to sequels I will include in this message. For the long version, visit this link.

www.oralceramics.com/mckinley.html

I plan to leave it up for a couple weeks. As for the references cited, I forget what "AAYA" stands for, but "Newbery" refers to Robin's Newbery Medal acceptance speech. The speech is very good, and Robin talks on her theme of "girls who do things". I happened on a copy of the speech on audio tape in the children's section of a library, but I know there are print copies out there too.

            From Robin McKinley's earliest writings, the land of Damar
            sprawled and grew in her imagination, demanding expression in
            What would become "a series of indefinite length." Everything
            McKinley writes is set in Damar, even her fairy tales (120).

            McKinley thought Hero would end with the battle, but

            "then there was all this business with ... Maur's head. I went on
            writing, thinking... what next? And I went on, and on, and
            then it occurred to me that I'd passed up the end of the book I
            was writing, and was into another book. Whereupon I stopped
            and went back and tidied off, and that's the first time I knew
            that there would be another book about Aerin."

            Since Hero appeared in 1984, that other book has not been pub-
            lished. Its working title is "Kirith", and it has mushroomed in nearly
            15 years to at least three more unpublished Damar books as
            McKinley has been sidetracked by shorter, more attainable writing
            projects (124).

Mail me if you have any questions. -Sarah

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Received on Thu Aug 5 22:17:58 1999