McGhee's first novel, Rainlight, follows the characters left behind after the sudden and accidental death of Starr Williams. It received positive reviews and won both the Great Lakes College Association National Fiction Award and the Minnesota Book Award in 1999.[2] McGhee's sophomore effort, Shadow Baby, is witnessed through the eyes of a young girl who befriends an old man as part of a school project. It was a Pulitzer Prize nominee. McGhee continued her adult themes with Was It Beautiful?.
She then began writing children's pictures. Countdown to Kindergarten and Mrs. Watson Wants Your Teeth, both share the same main character who begins the first story as she enters kindergarten and is in first grade by the second book. Turning her hand to young adult novels, McGhee introduced Snap and All Rivers Flow to the Sea.
In Only a Witch Can Fly McGhee focuses on poetry. In this story-poem, created in
sestina form, a little girl dreams about flying on her broom.[3]
^
abcContemporary Authors Online, Gale, 26 July 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009.
^Downes, Lawrence. "Once Upon a Broomstick." The New York Times Book Review. (11 Oct. 2009): Book Review Desk: p12(L). Literature Resource Center. Gale. Hennepin County Library. 4 Jan. 2010 <
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=hennepin>.