Robert Newton Peck (February 17, 1928 – June 23, 2020) was an American author who specialized in children's and young adult literature.
Robert Newton Peck was reticent to discuss his early life, perhaps because the reality was in a number of respects different from statements he made and from the picture portrayed in his novels.
By the fall of 1930, however, his mother had filed for a separation, though both parents continued to live in Ticonderoga; a divorce was granted in early 1933.
From about the age of two, Peck and his mother lived in the home of her deceased parents, along with her sister, Caroline ("Carrie") Dornburgh.
[11] When Peck was about thirteen, he and his mother moved to Glens Falls, New York, for a couple years before returning to Ticonderoga.
Newton Peck's wife, Mary Haven, had family connections to Shoreham, Vermont, adjacent to Cornwall and directly across Lake Champlain from Ticonderoga.
World War II was then still in progress, but the surrenders of Germany and Japan had both occurred by the time Peck was out of training.
Fighting was still taking place, nevertheless, and he served as a private from 1945 to 1947 in the U.S. Army, including time in the 88th Infantry Division and as a machine-gunner in Italy defending the Morgan Line.
The following year, he transferred to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, after a football scout, apparently interested in Peck due to his size (6' 4"), urged him to apply for educational funding through the G.I.
Following his time at Cornell, Peck tried his hand at several creative endeavors (writing songs and jingles, comedy) until settling into the field of advertising in New York City in 1954.
He had published a much less well-known book, The Happy Sadist, ten years earlier, a satirical work which he called "a sort of unprofound autobiography".
His Soup series, another semi-autobiographical work, was immensely popular and ran to nearly twenty separate titles and was adapted for television in 1978.
[25] While A Day No Pigs Would Die is certainly Peck's most famous work, and has been published in over 40 countries, it has also been the target of censorship due to some of its graphic descriptions.
Rights to the book, as well as his novel Millie's Boy, were purchased by Twentieth Century Fox for film adaptations, but were never produced.