While Robert Cormier began his career writing fiction for adults, The Chocolate War (1974) established his reputation as an author of young adult literature. He says that he writes novels with young people in them rather than stories for young adult readers; however, he acknowledges that his most avid followers are junior and senior high school students.

Cormier began writing as a journalist in 1948, and he twice received the Associated Press award for the best news story in New England (1959, 1973) and won an award sponsored by the K. R. Thomson Newspapers for best column in 1974. Critical honors for his young adult novels have included the New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year Award for The Chocolate War in 1974, for I Am the Cheese in 1977, and for After the First Death in 1979. The Chocolate War received the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979 and was, along with I Am the...