Alexander Key was born in 1904 in LaPlatte, Maryland to Alexander Hill and Charlotte (Ryder) Key. The family soon moved to Florida, where he spent the next 6 years of his life. His father owned a sawmill and cotton gin, both of which were burned by night riders shortly before his father's death when Key was about six. Between the time of his father's death and his mother's death in an accident when he was 15, Key attended at least 14 different schools, including a military school in Georgia.[2]
After his mother's death, Key was raised by various relatives for the rest of his childhood.[3]
Key is known for his portrayals of alien but human-looking people who have tremendously strong psychic/psionic abilities, a close communion with nature, and who can telepathically speak with animals. In his nonfiction book The Strange White Doves, he professed his belief that animals are conscious, thinking, feeling, perceiving, independent, and self-aware intelligent beings, and that they have subtle ways of communicating, perhaps via empathy or telepathy. The protagonists of Key's books are often ostracized, feared, or persecuted because of their astonishing abilities or extraterrestrial origins, and Key uses this as a clear metaphor for racism and other prejudice.
In several of his novels (most notably The Case of the Vanishing Boy), Key portrays some sort of communal withdrawal from society by a group of like-minded individuals. Key sometimes depicted government-sponsored social services for children as inefficient or even counterproductive in its efforts: in The Forgotten Door, social services is presented as a clearly undesirable alternative for the protagonist Little Jon, and, in Escape to Witch Mountain, Tony and Tia actively flee the system. In both cases, however, it is for a very logical reason: the characters are "not from around here". All they want to do is go home and, happily, a few of us locals have the decency to help them do so.
The plot of Key's The Magic Meadow is even more poignant for any reader who has ever been bedridden in a hospital. Its ending in particular is phenomenally optimistic. That was another Alexander Key theme: that good and decent people deserve to escape to a place worthy of them.
Selected works
As illustrator
In the Light of Myth: Selections from the World's Myths, compiled and interpreted by Rannie B. Baker (1925) OCLC593232
Real Legends of New England, G. Waldo Browne (1930) OCLC1710918
The Book of Dragons, selected and edited by O. Muiriel Fuller (1931) OCLC2391529
Suwannee River: Strange Green Land, Cecile Hulse Matschat (1938) OCLC484454
As writer
The Red Eagle: A Tale for Young Aviators (1930) OCLC3442600
^ ab"Alexander Key - FAQ". Archived from the original on 2016-03-09. Retrieved 2007-08-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
"The Earth Library". Archived from the original on 2005-02-18. Retrieved 2005-04-03.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) Read some of Mr. Key's out-of-print books online.
