Richard Peck - (1934- )

His Life:

Richard was crazy about cars when he was young and took pride in the fact that he could instantly identify the make and model of each on-coming car. He went to college in Exeter, England and then served a stint in the army. He then became a junior high school teacher. He taught in Illinois and in New York City.

Peck became familiar with contemporary adolescent problems while teaching high school in Illinois. He liked his students, but after several years, he became discouraged and quit. He decided to write books for teenagers that featured the problems he had seen. In 1971 he left teaching to become a full time writer. His first novel was Don't Look and It Won't Hurt

“Ironically, it was my students who taught me to be a writer, though I had been hired to teach them. 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 observed that young adults want approval from their peers, and they seek reassurance from their reading material. Peck believes that in a young adult novel, “the reader meets a worthy young character who takes one step nearer maturity, and he or she takes that step independently.”

Disliking much of modern technology, Richard Peck does not have a computer. He types his manuscripts on a regular typewriter. For some time, he had his friend Paula Danziger's voice on his answering machine. Because of his anti-technology stance, you'll find information about Mr. Peck and some of his speeches on the Internet put out by others but you won't find his website, for he has none.

Richard Peck says "I'd be a teacher yet if I'd been allowed to teach as I'd been taught. I went looking for another arena for communicating with the young, another corner to eavesdrop in. I found it in writing to and about young people coming of age. On a good day, a very good day, I receive a letter from some young reader in a town where I've never been, asking, "How do you know me? Do you live around here?" I try to."

The Awards:

His Books:

This was Peck's first novel and it centers around a family in a small Midwestern town. Carol Patterson is in the middle, chronologically and emotionally. Her father left when she was six. Her mother works most evenings as a hostess in a restaurant. Carol's older sister, Ellen, becomes pregnant by a man currently serving a drug sentence. Her younger sister, Liz, is pretty much ignored by the family. It's Carol who tries to keep their mother mollified and their lives intact. Ellen elects to go to a home for unwed mothers in Chicago and her mother clamps down even harder on Carol. Then Carol takes on the role of parent to Ellen and to Liz even going to their father for money to make the trip to Chicago to see Ellen.

(From a reader) This book is great! It may be short in length, but it is a great story. All her life, Karen has known nothing but boarding school after boarding school. Her father, her only parent, is a mob boss, and Karen doesn't really know it. She has always kind of suspected it, but never confirmed it. She doesn't really want to know the truth. She is very out of touch with her father, partly because everything is handled by her father's secretary, Miss Simon. One day, the headmistriss at Karen's boarding school recieves a call to get Karen and tell her to pack her bags because her father is taking her to London. This call is supposedly from Miss Simon, snd there is no question in that matter at that point in the book. When she finally gets there, the people that meet her are again, "supposedly" her deceased mother's cousins. After a few odd happenings, Karen starts to think that something isn't right, so she calls upon an old friend who happens to be going to school in London. He comes to the rescue, and whisks her off to a safe place, however, all is not right yet. Her mother's supposed cousins chase them all over, and finally.... Well I guess you'll have to read the book to find out, won't you? This is such a good book. If you like excitment, action, and drama, this is the book for you. Read it already!

Flip and Brian have been best friends since grade school. But everything changes during the spring of seventh grade. That's when they find the dead man lying in the leaves near Dreamland Lake. The police think he's just a drifter who died from natural causes, but Flip and Brian suspect otherwise. When they return to take pictures of the crime scene, they discover traces of what seems to be cult activity. And someone - or something - is watching them. What happens in the summer that follows will change the course of their friendship - and their lives - forever.

Whenever teenage beauty Darlene Hoffmeister walked into a room, people turned to stare and admire her. She always seemed to take it in stride. But when she is chosen to be Teen Super Doll and whisked away from her small town to New York City with her friend and companion, Verna, a startling change takes place.

Can Darlene's appearance make up for whatever else she lacks? Should levelheaded Verna cover up for her friend when the going gets tough? Not many girls can live a dream. If Darlene and Verna dare to, will their lives ever be the same?

"Forget it," Alison counseled. "It never happened." But it was happening. The obscene notes. "Stop reading that garbage!" Alison shrieked and grabbed the neatly lettered page from Gail's frozen hands. And whenever Gail was alone, the phone rang and went dead as soon as she answered it. As her world shaded into a nightmare, Gail, surrounded by friends, family, and teachers, found herself utterly alone.

Then one evening her nightmare became fact when she learned an even more tragic truth; in spite of violence and degradation, she was still alone, the victim of a crime that punished the innocent and let the criminal go free.

Alexander has been told by a schoolmate, Blossom Culp (more about her later), that he has second sight and it isn't long before events prove her right. He sees and eventually talks to the ghost of a young Creole girl from the Civil War era who is haunting the barn. She warns him of an impending trolley car wreck and thus makes him a hero. His mother is appalled, but Blossom is delighted. So is Uncle Miles who is not to be squelched even by his sister-in-law. It is Miles who knows the secret story behind the ghost whose body must be first dug up and then laid to rest.

Blossom becomes involved with the ghost of a child who drowned on the Titanic. The lonely child was abandoned by his wealthy parents and Blossom attempts to change history by rescuing the boy. Using her telepathic powers she journeys to the doomed ship and to Buckingham Palace.

A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, An ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults, A New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year.

Understanding parents is seldom an easy task for teenagers and Jim has had less success in that direction than many. His father left the family years ago and Jim has been the caretaker of his younger brother Byron since their mother became ill. They've been living under their grandmother's well-regulated but emotionally distant regime. Now, after their mother's suicide, the two boys have been sent to spend the summer with their father in Florida. Jim's anger is evident from the first moment the boys join their father. The battle is joined as Jim and his father fight for the affections and control of Byron.

Trying to escape the vicious King Kobra gang and troubled life at home, eighth graders Barnie and Teresa flee the city. With only four dollars between them, they hop a bus, hoping to find a new life at the end of the line. Destination: Paradise Park. But Paradise Park turns out to be a cement-covered suburban shopping mall--not quite the paradise they had hoped for.

With no money and no home to retum to, they are forced to stay. And paradise park takes them in--in more ways than one. Barnie and Teresa spend their days and nights in the climate-controlled consumer paradise of a large department store. And just when they think they can live there unnoticed forever, Teresa and Barnie find that even Paradise Park has its secrets. Even in the dead of night, they are far from alone....

In 1911, eighteen-year-old Mary Cooke comes to stately Whitwell Hall to serve as maid for the strong-willed young Amanda Whitwell. To Mary' astonishment, her aristocratic new employer is her near-double. A dutiful servant girl, "Miranda"--as her arrogant mistress renames her--must stand by as Amanda ensnares both men whom Miranda herself loves. But when maid and mistress journey together on the Titanic, Miranda sees the chance to seize her destiny...forever.

This is the third in the hilarious Blossom Culp series. Outsider Blossom is snubbed by Letty and her friends as they transform an old house into a haunted one for Halloween. Undeterred, Blossom and Alexander explore the house ahead of time only to be catapulted into the present to be faced with computers and modern technology unfamiliar in their world of 1914.

It's Halloween, 1914. Teenage psychic Blossom Culp sneaks into the house where the rest of her class is having a party-and that's when everything goes haywire. Suddenly Blossom is hurled into a time warp. Her psychic powers have found a way to send her into the future-our time. But will they be able to send her back?

This is one of best historical novels I have read .

Reviewer: A reader

This novel which spans 100 years (ca. 1840 to 1940)was a hard book for this occasional reader to put down! Besides an amazing story, you get the ambiance of each period in history that the characters live through. An excellent read!

Buck, Katey and Trav have been friends since seventh grade. Now in high school each has family problems, but Trav is seriously disturbed and eventually kills himself leaving behind guilt and anger in his friends. Learning how to grieve and how to accept help from parents is the focus of this hard-hitting novel.

How well do we know our best friends?
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year.

This is the fourth adventure of the Blossom Culp books. Blossom is gifted with second sight in this story set in 1914. We return to Bluff City as Blossom and Alexander are contacted by the spirit of an ancient princess through a scarab and the princess is furious. They are catapulted out of their history class and into ancient Egypt where they must help the princess regain her tomb. Almost simultaneously they must help their history teacher keep her job after a protest suffragette demonstration.Complications abound and Blossom, as usual, is culpable. And, yes, her unwilling accomplice is once again the fatuous but good looking Alexander Armsworth. Also returning are Blossom's chief antagonist, the dreaded Letty Shambaugh and her coterie of lesser nemeses, the Sunny Thoughts and Busy Fingers Sisterhood.

New girl in town Chelsea Olinger hopes to pass unnoticed through her sophomore year at Crestwood High. This proves impossible when wealthy, self-assured Ashley Packard singles Chelsea out as her friend. Flattered by the attention, Chelsea is soon immersed in Ashley's golden world, ignoring her mother's disapproval and even her own uneasy feelings. Only after a senseless tragedy occurs does Chelsea fully realize Ashley's true character and motives, as well as come to understand what friendship really means. The characters, both adult and adolescent, are expertly drawn and totally believable. Peck obviously knows how teenagers think and feel, and this insight enables him to bring his characters vibrantly to life.

Drew and his friend Bates had been putting the finishing touches on their summer fantasies of girls and cars when Drew's single parent mother bursts his balloon, telling him that he and his 14-year-old sister Steph (whom he sees as a meddlesome bother) are expected to accept an invitation from their never-before-seen grandmother to be her guests on an all-summer cruise from London to Leningrad. Much to their surprise, Drew and Steph become attached to their grandmother, Connie Carlson, a singer-entertainer who made her mark in the '40s and '50s. Connie brings together Steph and Drew, and they learn about their mother, their grandfather (an alcoholic piano player on board), and about themselves. They also learn the tragic truth about Connie.

Why is Chad so uneasy when his California family rents a town house in New York City? Once there he hears voices--late at night, after midnight in this strange house that's at least one hundred years old.

Then he finds that his younger brother, Luke, hears them, too, and even their older sister Heidi's afraid to stay in the house alone. As Chad and Luke explore the house, they begin to slip in and out of their own time, back to the winter of 1888. Are the voices they hear crying out for help? Will Chad ignore the voices or plunge into the unknown danger of one handred years before?

This book deals with Jessica, a young woman who resents her mother, idolizes her father, and tries hard to follow the teenage crowd. She is literally and figuratively stuck in a very small place, as she cannot acknowledge her father's part in her parents' divorce and stays holed up in her room much of the time. However, these things change when her mother sends her to Mexico to spend Christmas with her much-adored father. Once there, Jessica learns that there is more to life than following the crowds, that her father is not the perfect person that she imagines, and that her mother isn't so bad after all. Simply put, she grows up. In the bargain, she develops a relationship with an ailing great-uncle who teaches her to treasure the time she has, and to take advantage of opportunities when they show themselves.

A merry spoof of everything from L.A. and TV pilots to beauty salons: Buffie explains how she and the rest of the Babcock family find themselves run out of Hollywood and on their way to the place that has inspired their father's increasingly alarming bouts of nostalgia--his hometown, where his fond memories and the bombed-out look of Hickory Fork don't mesh. Citizens are fearful of a teenage gang (``the Mall Rats'') that's trashed the local shopping center, runs the school, and regularly shakes down other students. Buffie's older sister Bambi, not impressed, seeks to strip the M.R.'s of their status. The Babcocks put on a show worthy of Andy Hardy, get Hickory Fork back on the straight and narrow, then return to the top of the TV heap.

Who says that humor and science fiction don't mix? Peck pulls together threads from these and several other genres (problem novel, time travel fantasy, ghost story) to weave his own pattern of adventure and comic relief. Josh, a sixth grader at a private school in New York City, is barely coping with his parents' separation and the stream of unsuitable au pairs his mother hires. When his best friend, Aaron, merges two computers into a time machine, it seems an unwanted complication, but visitors from the past have an unexpected impact on the present--and possibly the future. Josh and Aaron endure the discomfort of molecular reorganization to experience the thrill of time travel, but the most memorable scenes occur when they bring people from the past into the present. Elements of the plot may intrigue those who wonder about the nature of time, but most readers will be happy reading this witty, fast-paced novel just to see what happens next.

In this perceptive, chilling look at censorship and religious fanaticism, tenth-grader Todd and his family discover that their secure suburban community is no protection against obsessive, destructive ideas. He gets a crush on Laura, who baby-sits his little sister--only to discover that Laura is a fundamentalist Christian who brainwashes and terrifies the child by telling her about evil witches and devils. Hate groups and book censors in the community are openly trying to ban books that don't fit their views. And Todd discovers hidden censorship, even among the kids themselves, who don't want to know about things like AIDS. Where are community values? The didacticism is loud and clear, and the foreshadowing is heavy. One teacher even acts as spokesperson, spelling out the messages, and the class discussion of Fahrenheit 451 is a commentary on what's happening now.

The continuing adventures through time, space, and middle school of Josh Lewis and Aaron Zimmer, first introduced in Lost in Cyberspace (Dial, 1995). Techno-nerd Aaron has found a formula that allows cyberspace travel through cellular reorganization. Unfortunately, there are bugs in the program that turn the computer into an uncontrollable wish-granting time-travel machine. The boys shun soccer camp, instead attending summer school for history at their exclusive New York City private school. Their study of World War II has surprising results for their 80-year-old lonesome neighbor, Miss Mathers. Humor, fantasy, science fiction, and even a touch of mystery all cleverly combine to make this book a guaranteed fun, fast-paced adventure.

Three fortysomething women, friends since childhood, travel to London for a much-needed vacation. Lesley, the organizer, is a wealthy married woman whose days are filled with volunteer projects. Julia is a single Manhattan interior designer still mourning the AIDS-related death of her business partner, and Margo, a teacher and newly divorced mother of a teenage girl, is recovering from being shot in her classroom. What begins as a meticulously planned holiday quickly turns into something magical, as the three women rediscover one another and the joy that has been missing from their lives. Written by the award-winning author of a number of books for young adults, this is a wonderful novel - cozy, charming, and marvelously entertaining.

Each summer over the nine years of the Depression, Joey and his sister, Mary Alice-two city slickers from Chicago-make their annual summer visit to Grandma Dowdel's seemingly sleepy Illinois town. Soon enough, they find that it's far from sleepy... and Grandma is far from your typical grandmother. From seeing their first corpse (and he isn't resting easy) to helping Grandma trespass, pinch property, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry-all in one day-Joey and Mary Alice have nine summers they'll never forget. Richard Peck's laugh-out-loud funny, episodic novel makes sure that you never will, either!

The 1999 Newbery Honor Book-"A small masterpiece of storytelling."

Molly has been dumped with her Great-Aunt Fay. Her mother has left her many times before and the knowledge we gain of life with the woman Molly calls Debbie is that of homelessness. Molly has learned how to cope. She doesn't try to make friends because she won't be there long enough. Now at Aunt Fay's Molly meets Will, another stray child. Aunt Fay is a practical nurse and treats patients in their homes. One of her patients is the spoiled and self-centered Mrs. Voorhees. Aunt Fay also spends a lot of time next door because of Will's father who is dying of AIDS. Molly finds out several secrets before the year is up as she comes to grips with her lot in life and learns to love and trust.

It's the 1930s and Grandma lives in downstate, rural Illinois. Actually she does more than live there; she rules there. In the earlier book her home was haven and respite for both of her grandchildren every summer. Now, Joey is working in a CCC camp so it is Mary Alice who comes to Grandma Dowdel's alone to spend a year while their parents manage life in considerably straitened circumstances in Chicago. The prospect of a whole year in Grandma's domain is somewhat daunting to the young teenager. Getting used to the kids and customs in the tiny country school are only one of the many adjustments Mary Alice must make but we know Grandma will lend a hand. We're just not sure, and Mary Alice is not at all sure, that things will get better or worse when Grandma gets involved.

Granddad emits a strangled sound, 13-year-old Rosie pitches right off her chair, and young Buster just vibrates. What event catapults the Beckett family into such a state? The arrival of a letter from distant Chicago--and not just a letter, an invitation from Mama's elusive, wealthy sister Aunt Euterpe. She decides that it's high time for the children to see the world beyond "the four walls of a one-room country schoolhouse." And what better opportunity than the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, to honor the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America? Spanish nobility, President Cleveland, and Ferris wheels, oh my!

The year is 1861. Civil war is imminent and Tilly Pruitt's brother, Noah, is eager to go and fight on the side of the North. With her father long gone, Tilly, her sister, and their mother struggle to make ends meet and hold the dwindling Pruitt family together. Then one night a mysterious girl arrives on a steamboat bound for St. Louis. Delphine is unlike anyone the small river town has even seen. Mrs. Pruitt agrees to take Delphine and her dark, silent traveling companion in as boarders. No one in town knows what to make of the two strangers, and so the rumors fly. Is Delphine's companion a slave? Could they be spies for the South? Are the Pruitts traitors? A masterful tale of mystery and war, and a breathtaking portrait of the lifelong impact one person can have on another.

Now that Russell's teacher's done passed away, maybe Hominy Ridge School will be shut down for good and he can light out for the endless skies of the Dakotas to join a team of harvesters working the new 1904 all-steel threshing machines. No such luck. Russell and his schoolmates are about to be ruled by a new teacher who is Russell's worst nightmare--his sister. Russell's going to do whatever it takes to sink the school, even if it means resorting to stealing supplies, rustic vandalism, torching a boy's privy, and rustling up more snakes than you can shake a stick at.

Peewee idolizes Jake, a big brother whose dreams of auto mechanic glory are fueled by the hard road coming to link their Indiana town and futures with the twentieth century. And motoring down the road comes Irene Ridpath, a young librarian with plans to astonish them all and turn Peewee's life upside down.

This novel, with its quirky characters, folksy setting, classic cars, and hilariously larger-than-life moments, is vintage Richard Peck - an offbeat, deliciously wicked comedy that is also unexpectedly moving.

Davy Bowman's brother and their dad hung the moon. Dad looks forward to Halloween more than a kid, and Davy's brother, Bill, flies B-17s. Davy adores these two heroes and tries his best to follow their lead, especially now. World War II has invaded Davy's homefront boyhood. There's an air raid drill in the classroom, and being a kid is an endless scrap drive. Bill has joined up, breaking their dad's heart. It's an intense, confusing time, and one that will invite Davy to grow up in a hurry. Still, Richard Peck is a master of comedy, and even in this novel of wartime uncertainty, he infuses his tale with humor: oddballs and rascals and boyhood misadventures alongside the poignant moments. This is one of Richard Peck's very finest novels--a tender, unforgettable portrait of the World War II homefront and a family's love.