Richard Peck was bom on April 5, 1934, in Decatur, Illinois. He attended Exeter University in England, graduated from DePauw University in Indiana in 1956, and served in the U.S.

Army as a clerk at a field post near Ansbach, Germany. After his tour of duty, he attended graduate school and taught English at Southern Illinois University, receiving his master's degree in 1959. He taught English in a suburban high school in Northbrook, Illinois, from 1961 to 1963, worked as a textbook editor for Scott, Foresman Company from 1963 to 1965, and then taught English at Hunter College and Hunter College High School in New York City. In 1971 he resigned from teaching to become a full-time writer. Nonetheless, he still sees himself as a teacher, as he writes in an April 1983 article in Horn Book: "I resigned, but teaching isn't a job you ever quit. It may be something less than...