A question, not an answer

“I read, because one life is not enough, and in the page of a book I can be anyone.”

 – Richard Peck

And, as prolific as he is as a reader, Peck is equally prolific as a writer of modern Young Adult literature.   Over the years he has won dozens of awards for his writing for Young Adults, picking up both a Newbery Medal  (for his novel A Year Down Yonder) and the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for his cumulative contributions to the genre’. 

Along the way, of course, he also has developed a devoted “adult” population of readers, myself included.  Thus, when my new book came out and some in the ALA dubbed it “Young Adult” as well as “Mystery” and “Adventure,” I was flattered to be included in Peck’s world.

Peck’s career as a writer actually started when he was sidetracked from what he thought was going to be a career as a high school teacher.  He was happily teaching high school in the 1950s when he was transferred to a junior high to teach English.  Upset about the move, he decided to take time away from teaching to try writing, focusing on his observations about the junior high school students he didn’t want to teach.  "Ironically,” he said,  “it was my students who taught me to be a writer, though I was hired to teach them."

While his highest accolades come for his Newbery winner, I highly recommend his book Amanda/Miranda, a twist on both the old Prince and the Pauper story and the tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic. 

 

  

Richard Peck

Peck believes each book should be a question, not an answer and that before anything else can happen a book needs to be entertaining. “A young adult novel ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning,” he said, “with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.”

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