In England in the 19th century, advances in printing methods, combined with the rise of a prosperous middle class, engendered a booming new industry of books published just for children. Casting about for cheap story material, English publishers laid hands on the subtle, sensual adult fairy tales of the Continental tradition and revised them into simpler stories instilled with Victorian values. Although these simplified versions retained much of the violence of the older stories, elements of sexuality and moral complexity were carefully scrubbed away — along with the fiesty heroines who appeared everywhere in the older tales, tamed now into models of Victorian propiety and passivity. In the 20th century, the Walt Disney Studios watered down the tales further still in popular animated films like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, continuing the trend of turning active heroines into powerless damsels in distress. Walt Disney considered even the Victorian versions of the tales too dark for 20th century audiences. "It's just that people now don't want fairy stories the way they were written," Disney commented. "They were too rough."

McKillip illustrated by Brian Froud
The Borderland Series New American Library Tor Books Harper Prism 1985 to present: a Young Adult shared-world series featuring the intersection between Elfland and human lands generally populated by teenagers runaways and exiles. She was a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales edited by Jack Zipes. Works


Fiction
"The Green Children" The Armless Maiden Tor Books 1995
The Wood Wife Tor Books 1996 (winner of the Mythopoeic Award)
"The Color of Angels" The Horns of Elfland New American Library 1997
The Raven Queen with Ellen Steiber Random House 1999
The Changeling Random House 1995
The Old Oak Wood Series Simon & Schuster (illustrated by Wendy Froud):

A Midsummer Night's Faery Tale 1999
The Winter Child 2000
The Faeries of Spring Cottage 2001

"Red Rock" Century Magazine 2000
The Moon Wife Tor Books forthcoming 2012
Little Owl Viking forthcoming 2012


Nonfiction
"Surviving Childhood" The Armless Maiden Tor Books 1995
"Transformations" Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales (Expanded Edition) Anchor 1998
Co-writer and editor of Brian Froud's Good Faeries/Bad Faeries Simon & Schuster 2000
"On Tolkien and Fairy Stories" Meditations on Middle-Earth St.

As an artist Windling specializes in work inspired by myth folklore and fairy tales. She received the Solstice Award in 2010 which honors "individuals with a significant impact on the speculative fiction field. She was a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales edited by Jack Zipes.