Richard peck author biography
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Richard Peck (writer) facts for kids
Richard Wayne Peck (April 10, – May 23, ) was an American novelist known for his prolific contributions to modern young adult literature. He was awarded the Newbery Medal in for his novel A Year Down Yonder (the sequel to A Long Way From Chicago). For his cumulative contribution to young-adult literature, he received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in
Early life
Richard Wayne Peck was born on April 5, , in Illinois to Virginia Grey Peck and Wayne Peck. His mother was a Wesleyan University graduate,and his father owned a service station. A sister, Cheryl, would later become an administrator at a college. He attended elementary and high schools in Decatur, Illinois.
Peck earned a bachelor's degree in English at DePauw University in He spent his junior year abroad at the University of Exeter.
After college, he was drafted into the US Army as a chaplain's assistant and spent two years serving in Stuttgart, Germany. In a interview he commented, "I think your view of the world goes on—for the rest of your life—as the world you saw as you emerged into it as an adult."
After his military service ended, he completed a master's degree at Southern Illinois University in
Career
Peck worked as a high s
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Richard Peck, a Newbery Award winner and best-selling author of young adult books, wrote his first line of fiction the day he quit his junior high school teaching job. The year was and Peck was thirty-seven years old. Teaching had reacquainted him with the challenges of being young: “As adults, we want young people to start looking for themselves, but they only want to look for leaders.”
He remembers when life was different. “When I was young, we were never more than five minutes from the nearest adult, and that solved most of the problems I write about for a later generation living nearer the edge.” In fact, he remembers the year when everything changed. “I was teaching. It was the second semester of the school year. The change was due to many things: the collapse of family structure, the politicization of schools. . . . But, the authority of the peer group began to replace adult authority, and children quickly learned that they dare not be better achievers than their leaders in the peer group,” he explains. “You only grow up when you’ve walked away from those people. In all my novels, you have to declare your independence from your peers before you can take that first real step toward yourself.”
Peck calls the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
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Children's Author/Illustrator Biographies
Peck, Richard
Apr 5, -
Author
Ludington Award Winner
Ludington Award Citation
SOURCE CITATION
"Richard (Wayne) Peck." Vital Authors put up with Illustrators luggage compartment Children put up with Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Heap, Reproduced pen Biography Reserve Center. Town Hills, Mich.: Thomson Turbulence.
Pic provided building block Penguin Books for Pubescent Readers.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
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