Robert Newton Peck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Newton Peck is an American author of books for young adults. His titles include Soup and A Day No Pigs Would Die. He claims to have been born on February 17, 1928, in Vermont, but has refused to say where in Vermont (similarly, he claims to have graduated from a Vermont high school which he has refused to identify). Other sources state that he was born in Ticonderoga, New York, which is where his mother was born. His father was born in Cornwall, Vermont.
Peck has written over sixty books.
He was a smart student, although his schooling was cut short by World War II. During and shortly after the conflict, he served as a machine-gunner in the U.S. Army 88th Infantry Division. Upon returning to the United States, he entered Rollins College, graduating in 1953. He then entered Cornell Law School, but never finished his course of study.
Newton married Dorothy Anne Houston and fathered two children, Anne and Christopher. The best man at the wedding and the godfather to the children was Fred Rogers, the star of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.
A Day No Pigs Would Die was his first novel, published in 1972 when he was already 44 years old. From then on he continued his lifelong journey through literature. To date, he has been credited for writing 53 fiction books, 5 nonfiction books, 35 songs, 3 television specials and over a hundred poems.
In 1993, Peck was diagnosed with oral cancer, but survived.
[edit] Trivia
Before becoming a full-time writer, Peck worked a series of various jobs, including at one point slaughtering pigs. This experience and his father's similar employment during Peck's childhood would later help inform A Day No Pigs Would Die.
