The Hero and The Crown by Robin McKinley
Winner, 1985 Newbery Award
Quick Summary
Aerin, the only daughter of the Damarian king and a witchwoman, fights dragons, finds the Hero's Crown and fulfills her rightful destiny.
Favorite Quote
Did she really want to kill dragon? Yes. Why? Pause. To be doing something. To be doing something better than anyone else was doing it.
About the Author
Robin McKinley is an author who writes mainly in the fantasy genre. She is known for the strong female characters in her books. She's on social media, even doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) session in 2014.
My Project
For my project, I painted several layers of green, gold, and bronze for the background. I first tried watercolors, but I decided I preferred the deeper, richer tones of the acrylics. I chose the greens for the outdoors setting and the metallics for the ruling family. There is some crackling and texture in the background to give it an aged look.
I added a dragon silhouette to the foreground. One of the main dragons in the book, Maur, is known as the black dragon, but the use of shadow also speaks to the menacing feel with the dragons hovering near the town unseen by still felt. The red, sparkling stone represents the dragon's bloodstone mentioned in the book. I added it for a bit of color.
Final Thoughts
The writing is lush and very detailed, which is such a contrast to the books I normally read. Here's a sample sentence:
Ash lay more heavily around the dragon than in the rest of the small valley, in spite of the breeze; but around the dragon the breeze lifted a cloud that eddied and lifted and swelled and diminished so that it was hard to tell—as it had been when she and Talat had first ridden to confront the monster—where Maur ended and the earth began.
The book starts and builds slowly with the main character developing and growing over time. As others have noted, the author writes fairy tales as if they happened to real people with severe injuries, conflicting emotions, setbacks, and other details glossed over in more traditional tales. The Hero and The Crown is considered a prequel to The Blue Sword which was published in 1982 and won a Newbery Honor Award in 1983.
If you read this book, I'd love to hear what you think in the comments.