He began teaching high school at Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Ill., in 1961 and three years later moved to New York City to teach English at Hunter College High School in New York City. He received a master’s degree in English in 1959 from Southern Illinois University and continued his graduate studies at Washington University in St. Army in Stuttgart, Germany, where he worked as a chaplain’s assistant largely doing writing, including sermons, and paperwork during a time of peace between the Korean and Vietnam wars. After graduation, he served two years in the U.S. He spent his junior year abroad at Exeter University in England before graduating from DePauw in 1956 with a B.A. Peck earned a scholarship to DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., planning to be a teacher. “I wanted to be a writer before I could read,” he said.Īt age 16, Peck traveled to New York City for the first time, visiting a distant relative who worked at the United Nations and recalled, “This was the place I’d been homesick for all along.” In his senior year of high school, a particularly tough English teacher challenged Peck to master writing skills-rewriting, meeting deadlines, gathering interesting material-that he carried with him throughout his career.

In addition to the Peck family’s oral traditions, Peck recalled that his mother had read to him from a very young age, making him eager to tackle school and the larger world beyond. Though Peck would eventually live in New York City for most of his life, the distinct sense of place from his boyhood remained with him, and he set most of his novels in the Midwest. He often spoke of the adventures he had while exploring there. And his father’s experiences growing up in the country also added to the rich storytelling mix.įor his first 18 years, Peck grew up in a house located at the edge of an expansive city park that had a colorful history as a racetrack, county fairgrounds, and an amusement park over the years. “From my father I learned nostalgia as an art form,” Peck wrote in his autobiography. Peck was born Apin Decatur, Ill., a place he described in his autobiography for Something About the Author as “in middle Middle America.” His mother was one of seven siblings, and his maternal grandmother also had many sisters, so as a boy, Peck recalled being “surrounded by elders of all ages,” many of whom had what he considered “fine names.” The stories related by the old men who gathered at his father’s Phillips 66 gas station, and the tales of his grandmother, aunts, and uncles were always swirling around him.

Author Richard Peck, winner of the Newbery Medal and widely acclaimed for his realistic YA novels, died May 23 at his home in New York City following a long illness.

Amanda/Miranda by Richard Peck