Meet the author

Keith Robinson.

Illustrator · United Kingdom

Keith Robinson: illustrator whose atmospheric artwork gives Anthony McGowan's Dogs of the Deadlands its aching, elemental sense of a wilderness reclaimed after Chernobyl.

Keith Robinson is a British illustrator whose atmospheric black-and-white artwork is a strong presence in Anthony McGowan's Dogs of the Deadlands, an unsentimental survival story set in the abandoned exclusion zone after the Chernobyl disaster. Following the dogs left behind as nature roars back and the forest fills with wolves, lynx and radiation, the novel asks young readers to sit with real hunger, real danger and real loss, and Robinson's illustrations capture both the menace and the grace of that strange wild — the bleakness of the hazards the animals face and the beauty of the moments when life is kinder. His pictures give the story much of its aching, elemental atmosphere, tracing the thread of a girl's love for the puppy she was forced to leave behind. A fine match for a modern animal-survival classic in the tradition of the great dog stories.