Robert Cormier (pronounced kor-MEER) was born and raised in Leominster, Massachusetts, a small town in the state's north-central region, where he grew up as part of a close-knit community of French Canadian immigrants. His Leominster-born wife, Connie, still resides in the house where they raised their three girls and one son, all of whom are now adults. They couldn't see any reason to quit. Cormier once observed, There are a lot of unwritten stories right here on Main Street. Cormier, a 30-year newspaper writer and columnist for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and the Fitchburg Sentinel, was frequently motivated by news stories.

What distinguishes his work is his ability to make bad action intelligible while remaining wicked. He told a reporter from School Library Journal, I'm extremely interested in intimidation. Furthermore, the ways in which people manipulate others. And there's the evident abuse of power.

Many of these topics are present in his best-known young Read More chevron_right

Robert Cormier (pronounced kor-MEER) was born and raised in Leominster, Massachusetts, a small town in the state's north-central region, where he grew up as part of a close-knit community of French Canadian immigrants. His Leominster-born wife, Connie, still resides in the house where they raised their three girls and one son, all of whom are now adults. They couldn't see any reason to quit. Cormier once observed, There are a lot of unwritten stories right here on Main Street. Cormier, a 30-year newspaper writer and columnist for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and the Fitchburg Sentinel, was frequently motivated by news stories.

What distinguishes his work is his ability to make bad action intelligible while remaining wicked. He told a reporter from School Library Journal, I'm extremely interested in intimidation. Furthermore, the ways in which people manipulate others. And there's the evident abuse of power.

Many of these topics are present in his best-known young adult novel, The Chocolate War. You always write from inside the person, a 15-year-old fan said. Cormier traveled the world, lecturing at schools, colleges, and universities, as well as teacher and librarian groups, from Australia to New Zealand (where he felt particularly delighted by dipping his hand in the Indian Ocean) to much of Europe. He traveled to practically every state in the United States.

While Cormier enjoyed traveling, he also expressed a strong desire to return to his hometown of Leominster. Cormier was a devout Catholic who went to a parochial school, when one of his professors recognized his writing skills in seventh grade. Yet, he stated that he had always aspired to be a writer, saying, I can't recall a period when I wasn't attempting to get something down on paper. His first poems appeared in the Leominster Daily Enterprise, and he had his first professional publication when a freshman at Fitchburg State College.

Florence Conlon, his lecturer, sent his short tale to The Sign, a national Catholic magazine, without his knowledge. The piece, The Small Things That Count, was sold for $75. From 1946 until 1948, Cormier worked as a writer for Worcester, Massachusetts-based radio station WTAG, where he authored screenplays and ads. He started his award-winning career as a newspaperman with the Worcester Telegram in 1948, first in Leominster and then in Fitchburg.

For that newspaper, he published A Tale from the Country, a weekly human-interest feature. In 1955, Cormier became the city hall and political reporter for the Fitchburg Sentinel, which subsequently became the Fitchburg-Leominster Sentinel and Enterprise. Later, he worked as a reporter and assistant editor, and under the pseudonym John Fitch IV, he authored a popular twice-weekly column. The national K.R. award was given to the column.

The finest human-interest piece published that year won the Thomason Prize in 1974. In the same year, he was recognized by the New England Associated Press Association for writing the finest deadline-driven news article. In 1978, he quit his job as a reporter to focus solely on writing. Now and at the Hour, Robert Cormier's first novel, was released in 1960.

The work, which was inspired by his father's death, received critical praise and was placed on Time magazine's Suggested Reading list for five weeks. It was followed by A Little Raw on Monday Mornings in 1963 and Take Me Where the Good Times Are in 1965, both of which received critical acclaim. The Newark Advocate praised the author as one of the best Catholic authors in the United States. Cormier wrote The Chocolate War in 1974, a novel that is still a best-seller a quarter-century later.

It was immediately lauded, but because to its uncompromising reality, it was also the target of censorship attempts. It was praised as ingeniously constructed and rich in concept in a front-page review in a special children's issue of The New York Times Book Review, and it went on to win innumerable accolades and honors, be taught in schools and colleges around the world, and be translated into more than a dozen languages. In 1977, I Am the Cheese was released, followed by After the First Death in 1979. These three novels cemented Cormier's reputation as a master of the young adult fiction.

In 1991, the American Library Association's Young Adult Services Section awarded him the Margaret A. The trilogy of books received the Edwards Prize, which recognized them as superbly designed and difficult stories that have become classics in young adult fiction. The National Council of Teachers of English and its Adolescent Literature Assembly (ALAN) awarded Cormier in 1982 for his major contribution to the field of adolescent literature as well as his original innovation. In 1980, the Saturday Evening Post, The Sign, and Redbook produced 8 Plus 1, an anthology of short stories that had previously appeared in such periodicals as the Saturday Evening Post, The Sign, and Redbook.

Many of the stories in the anthology, including The Moustache, President Cleveland, Where Are You?, became well-known in following years. The collection also won the Silver Burdett & Ginn World of Reading Readers' Choice Award, which is particularly noteworthy because young readers voted for Cormier to win. In 1991, his wife, Connie, compiled and edited I Have Words to Spend, a collection of his newspaper and magazine columns. The Bumblebee Flies Regardless, 1983; Beyond the Chocolate War, 1985; Fade, 1988; Other Bells for Us to Ring, 1990; We All Fell Down, 1991; Tunes for Bears to Dance To, 1992; In the Heart of the Night, 1995; Tenderness, 1997; Heroes, 1998; and Frenchtown Summer, 1999 are among Robert Cormier's other novels.

In April of 2000, this novel was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Young Adult Literature. All of his books have received critical acclaim and awards. In the Middle of the Night while Tenderness were both shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in England, and Heroes won a Highly Commended citation for the same award, both of which are rare accolades because the Carnegie Medal is normally given to a British book. Censorship groups have regularly attacked Cormier's novels because they are uncompromising in their depictions of the challenges that young people experience on a daily basis in a volatile society.

Teachers and librarians have praised his books for being eminently educational, helpful, and moral. Hundreds of schools, as well as adolescent literary courses at colleges and universities, teach his novels. Despite the fact that many of his works are marketed for young adults, Cormier's work is enjoyed by individuals of all ages. His themes of ordinary evil and what happens when good people do nothing are taken seriously, and he never offers the easy comfort of a happy ending.

Cormier's engrossing tales delve into the darkest recesses of the human mind, but always with a moral focus and a perceptive intellect that push readers to evaluate their own emotions and ethical views. Cormier was asked in an interview last year if he had accomplished what he set out to do at the start of his literary career. Well, yes, he replied, with typical humility. My ambition was to become well-known as a writer and to publish at least one book that people would read.

With the release of my first work, that dream came true, and everything else has been a pleasant bonus. Really, all I've ever wanted to do was write. That writing has left a legacy of magnificent books in the world, a body of work that will live on.