August 30, 2022 - BCPL Children's Author of the Month

Hello, fellow readers!

This month we're excited to share another installment of our Children's Author of the Month posts. August we are featuring the life of work of Richard Peck. This beloved children's author has several titles available from our libraries. His work has been enjoyed by generations of young readers. With memorable stories and characters, his novels and short fiction are fast becoming classics.

Richard Wayne Peck was born on April 5, 1934, 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 1956. 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 2003 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 1959.

Peck worked as a high school teacher, but much to his dismay, was transferred to a junior high school to teach English. After a while, he decided to cut his career short and write. However, these observations about junior high school students proved excellent material for his books. He said, "Ironically, it was my students who taught me to be a writer, though I was hired to teach them."

He left teaching in 1971 to write his first novel, Don't Look and It Won't Hurt, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1972, in which "A teenage girl struggles to understand her place within her family and in the world." He wrote a book each year since then — 41 books in 41 years.

Peck was an adjunct professor with Louisiana State University's School of Library and Information Sciences.

"Ironically, it was my students who taught me to be a writer, though I had been hired to teach them," Peck said in a speech published in Arkansas Libraries. "They taught me that a novel must entertain first before it can be anything else. I learned that there is no such thing as a 'grade reading level'; a young person's 'reading level' and attention span will rise and fall according to his degree of interest. I learned that if you do not have a happy ending for the young, you had better do some fast talking."

He lived in New York and divided his time between writing and traveling. Peck died in New York City in May 2018 at age 84.

"You never write about yourself; you just always wind up having written about yourself." — October 10, 2013, to a library full of 4th graders in Pleasanton, California

We hope you'll check in again next month to our author and series spotlights for young readers! Let us know if you've enjoyed any of Peck's work or some of your favorite similar authors.

We have many of Peck's titles available on WV Reads! Click below to check out a few. 

 https://wvreads.overdrive.com/wvreads-wvlc/content/search?query=Richard%20Peck

As always, images and info are courtesy of author webpages, wikipedia, WV Reads, and Google.