 McKinney recalls that her second grade teacher, Mrs. Teeter, recognized and encouraged her by giving her a double promotion from second to fourth grade.From a young age, her father Ralph Durrett, a schoolteacher, read her works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allen Poe, and Pinnochio.She is also quoted to have read "Byron, "Sheep Shearing in America, Kiss Me Deadly", and "Paradise Lost".