About
Robert Cormier
Robert Cormier was born in the year 1925. He has lived in Leominster, Massachusetts, his entire life. There he met his wife, Connie. Together they had four children: three girls and one boy.
Cormier attended a parochial school when he was younger. In the seventh
grade his teacher discovered that he had a talent for writing. He had
always wanted to be a writer.
Cormier was a newspaper reporter and columnist for 30 years. He found
many of his story ideas from events in the news. He also recieved his
ideas from his own life's events. His idea for The Chocolate War
came from his own son’s school chocolate sale, his son, like Jerry,
refused to sell chocolates. And that was okay because the sale was optional.
Everything was fine for his son. But Robert Cormier took the idea and
thought, "what if selling chocolates wasn’t completely optional?
What if something went wrong?"
In 1978, he left the newspaper business so he could be a full time writer.
His books include I am the Cheese, After the First Death,
The Chocolate War, Beyond the Chocolate War, Fade,
The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, We All Fall Down, Tunes for
Bears to Dance To, In the Middle of the Night, Other Bells
for Us to Ring, Tenderness, Heroes, and Eight Plus
One.
Robert Cormier has won many awards for his work. One very prominent award
was the Margaret A. Edwards Award. This honors authors who write
books for teens. His books are constantly on the Best Books for Young
Adults lists for the American Library Association, The New York Times,
and The School Library Journal.
Robert Cormier died on November 2, 2000.
Work cited
http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/askauthor/Cormier.html
http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/authors/corm.html