The Outlaws of Sherwood

by Robin McKinley

Overview

A dazzling retelling of Robin Hood that incorporates traditional tales and familiar characters with exciting new adventures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780441013258
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/04/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.47(w) x 8.22(h) x 0.97(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Robin McKinley's other books include the Newbery Award-winning The Hero and the Crown; Newbery Honor Book The Blue Sword; Sunshine; Spindle's End; Rose Daughter; Deerskin; The Outlaws of Sherwood; and the short story collections The Door in the Hedge; A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories; and, with her husband, the author Peter Dickinson, Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits. She lives in England with her husband, three whippets, and over five hundred rosebushes.

Editorial Reviews

McKinley brings to the Robin Hood legend a robustly romantic view. She renders it anew by fully developing the background and motive of each member of the merry band, from Robin's ``crime'' that sends him into the woods, to Marian's subterfuge as she straddles the worlds of the nobility and of the outlaws. Their habitations, foresting and thieving is explained, and McKinley, in a thoughtful afterword, reveals both her debt to and her differences with previous versions of the story. There is no reason, however, that readers of those stories might not enjoy this one as well. Although the author does fall into the politics indigenous only to the British isles, she presents a solid piece of tale-weaving, ingenious and ingenuous, causing readers to suspend belief willingly for a rousing good time. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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

School Library Journal

McKinley brings to the Robin Hood legend a robustly romantic view. . . . A solid piece of tale-weaving, ingenious and ingenuous, causing readers to suspend belief willingly for a rousing good time.”—Publishers Weekly

“Readers ready to think beyond stereotypes of glorious violence will find [this] Robin a hero for our times.”—Booklist

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

From the Publisher