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Robert Cormier

Biography

Robert Cormier

Robert Cormier doesn't look like a man who writes novels of stunning impact about the monstrous and inexorable power of evil. A slight man with wispy gray hair and a crooked smile, his eyes gaze straight at you with kindly frankness from behind his big glasses. He was for many years a newspaperman specializing in human interest stories. Cormier and his wife Connie have lived all their lives in the little New England mill town of Leominster, Massachusetts, where he grew up as part of a close, warm community of French Canadian immigrants. His four children and many grandchildren live nearby and visit often.

Cormier's eleven novels for young adults have won him the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, the ALAN Award from the National Council of Teachers of English, the California Young Reader Medal, and many places on almost every honor list in the field. His novel The Chocolate War is regarded as the leading masterwork of adolescent literature. Cormier travels and speaks extensively, and loves chocolate, the late night, and reading--especially horror.

Robert Cormier

Books by Robert Cormier

by Robert Cormier

Watching someone take a stand is easy; doing it yourself can be absolutely terrifying. That's what Jerry Renault learns when he refuses to participate in his school's annual candy drive and incurs the wrath of the ruling clique of students ---- a wrath egged on by the school's administration. The ending --- which takes place in a boxing ring --- is brutal, frightening, and completely mesmerizing.