I was never a big fan of Robert Cormier, perhaps this was because I was forced to read The Chocolate War as a teenager, a book that I did not like and therefore will never review. However, after getting off my distrust of Cormier I then read a small lesser known book called The Bumblebee Flies Anyway. Cormier won me over.
Robert Cormier was born in 1925 in Leominster, MA. He was the second eldest of eight children and because they had so many kids, their family was forced to move often since rent was so expensive with so many children. Robert never left or moved away from his hometown, until the day he died. Even his summer home was only 19 miles outside of town. Robert attended a private catholic school and starting writing from a young age, deciding to become a poet in middle school. As a freshman in college, Robert had his first short story published, The Sign. Robert went on to work as a journalist and wrote scripts for radio commercials, and continued to write for his local newspaper. The Chocolate War was Cormier's first novel, followed quickly by I Am the Cheese and After the First Death. Despite this bloggers dislike for his premier novel, Robert was good at finding the core issues that teens deal with and his books have withstood the test of time. Some of his other books have included Heroes, Fade, In the Middle of the Night, Tenderness, and We All Fall Down.
1 comments:
I absolutely love I Am the Cheese. It still freaks me out a little years later.
Did you know the phone number he used in his novels (usually the home number of the main character) was his real phone number? He would talk to fans who tried it. Too bad he died before I discovered him.
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