Robert Newton Peck

Robert Peck (born 1928) won critical and popular acclaim for his first novel, A Day No Pigs Would Die (1973). Critics lauded its unsentimental rendering of farm life and the often brutal realities of the natural world, and the book is now a frequently studied text in junior high school classrooms.

Peck was born in rural Vermont to Shaker farmers whose hard yet rewarding lives inspired much of his fiction. He commented: "A Day No Pigs Would Die was influenced by my father, an illiterate farmer and pig-slaughterer whose earthy wisdom continues to contribute to my understanding of the natural order and the old Shaker beliefs deeply rooted in the land and its harvest." The first of his family to learn to read and write, Peck was profoundly influenced by his grade school teacher and later based the character Miss Kelly in the Soup series of novels on her. As a young man he found employment as a lumberjack, hog butcher, and paper-mill worker. He joined the United States Army infantry during World War II, serving for two years in Italy, Germany, and France. After the war he received his bachelor's degree from Rollins College and studied law at Cornell University. He later became an advertising executive, writing jingles for television commercials, but abandoned this career following the successful publication of A Day No Pigs Would Die in 1973. He now divides his time between Vermont and Florida, where he is the director of Rollins College Writers Conference.

Told in a spare yet vivid style, A Day No Pigs Would Die revolves around thirteen-year-old Rob Peck and his relationship with his austere father, a farmer and hog butcher. Rob, in return for helping a neighbor's cow give birth, receives a sow that soon becomes his beloved pet. The pig proves barren, however, and Rob must help his father slaughter it, knowing that their meager income prohibits the luxury of a useless animal. Through this experience, he comes to understand the meaning of love and the necessity of death. He is also able to face the loss of his father, who, though silent on the subject, has been slowly dying. The reaction of reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt to A Day No Pigs Would Die echoed the estimation of many critics: "[This novel] is a stunning little dramatization of the brutality of life on a Vermont farm, of the necessary cruelty of nature, and of one family's attempt to transcend the hardness of life by accepting it. And while ... there is no rhetoric about love--in fact nobody in A Day No Pigs Would Die ever mentions the word love, or any other emotion for that matter--love nevertheless suffuses every page."

In the Soup series of novels, Peck embellishes upon his childhood adventures with Soup, his mischievous best friend whose practical jokes often result in mayhem at such small-town functions as parades and school plays. Among the best known of these books are Soup (1974), Soup and Me (1975), Soup for President (1978), and Soup's Drum (1980). Most critics have found that while the plots of the books have grown increasingly repetitive, the stories' slapstick humor ensures their continuing appeal for young readers. A similar estimation has been accorded to Peck's series of novels revolving around the character Trig, a preteen tomboy living in 1930s Vermont whose antics often arouse the displeasure of her elders. Trig (1977), Trig Sees Red (1978), Trig Goes Ape (1980), and Trig or Treat (1982) have also been faulted for what many reviewers regarded as Peck's superficial treatment of female characters, a criticism leveled against much of his fiction.

Other novels by Peck evince his interest in colonial America and the Revolutionary War. Such novels as Fawn (1975), Rabbits and Redcoats (1976), The King's Iron (1977), and Eagle Fur (1978) feature adolescents who come of age amidst historical events such as the capture of Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. Critics have praised the sense of place, strong characterizations, and powerful scenes of these books, yet find them marred by what they perceive as Peck's puerile treatment of violence and sexual relationships. The uneven quality of these novels typifies Peck's work following A Day No Pigs Would Die. However, most critics concur with the estimation of Anne Scott MacLeod that "those who admired Pigs have often been disappointed by Peck's work since that strong beginning. Nevertheless, we look with interest at each new title by this erratic author, hoping that he will sometime match the achievement of that first powerful, moving story."

The strength of Robert Newton Peck's works stems from their striking depictions of the past. Many of his books bring to life the rural Vermont of his childhood, describing the adventures and encounters with nature that helped shape his life. The six-foot-four-inch tall Peck once described himself as follows: "I wear mule-ear boots, a ten-gallon hat, Western shirts and weigh not quite 200 pounds." Peck went on to observe, "Socially, I'm about as sophisticated as a turnip.... I'm an expert skier, a dismal dancer, and I love horses." Sophisticated or not, the author has penned a long list of books for children, many of which reflect his boyhood struggle with the competitiveness of nature and its impending threat of death. Peck, who lives on a five-hundred-acre ranch in Florida, has also written poetry, adult novels, and how-to books for would-be writers.

Educators figure prominently in Peck's fiction, thanks to the influence of his first, much-admired teacher--he still respectfully refers to her as "Miss Kelly." "A lot of my characters are teachers--all of whom are strong, fair, and respected," Peck once explained. Although reading was a skill revered by the Peck's family and neighbors when he was a boy, not everyone was privileged enough to learn how to do it. In Peck's own family no one had ever attended school before him, although he was the youngest of seven children. Luckily, he was able to convince his parents to let him join the other students. Miss Kelly kindled the minds of the first through sixth grades in what Peck described in an essay for Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS) as a "tumble-down, one-room, dirt-road school in rural Vermont." There she taught the children to wash up before handling any of the few, but treasured, books. Ivanhoe, The Wind in the Willows, and Tom Sawyer were some of the classics Miss Kelly read to her classes, along with biographies of outstanding personalities such as Booker T. Washington, Mark Twain, and Charles Lindbergh.

Peck not only grew up to write many books of his own, he also married a librarian, Dorrie, in 1958. The best man at their wedding was none other than Fred Rogers, the star of the popular Mister Rogers' Neighborhood television show for children; Peck had met him in college. Writing about his own children, Christopher Haven and Anne Houston, Peck once stated: "I hope they both grow up to have a tough gut and a gentle heart. Because I don't want to sire a world of macho men or feminist women, but rather a less strident society of ladies and gentlemen."

Peck's writing career began with A Day No Pigs Would Die. The book was based on memories of his father, "an illiterate farmer and pig-slaughterer whose earthy wisdom continues to contribute to my understanding of the natural order and old Shaker beliefs deeply rooted in the land and its harvest," Peck once observed. In the story, a young boy comes of age when he must summon the will to kill his pet pig on the family farm in Vermont. The book was met with mixed reviews because of the graphic account of the butchering, but for the most part Peck earned praise for his honest and unsentimental story.

A boy named "Soup" is featured in Peck's 1974 book, Soup, and in a number of his following works. "Rob and Soup, though abrim with rascality, respect their beloved Miss Kelly, her Vermont virtue--and her ruler," Peck once remarked. Like Miss Kelly, the character Soup is based on a real person in Peck's life: his closest friend in childhood. Describing the real Soup in his autobiographical essay, Peck expressed his view that "When a boy has a best friend, he's the richest kid on Earth." He went on to note that Soup's "real and righteous name was Luther Wesley Vinson, and he grew up too, to become a minister." Also among Peck's many works are three historical novels which arose from his interest in the Colonial and Revolutionary periods in American history. The children in Hang for Treason,Fawn, and Rabbits and Redcoats are believable because of Peck's view that children are the same regardless of the time period in which they are born.

Although many of his works have been well-received by children and young adults, Peck once commented that he "didn't start out to write for any particular age group. If my books turn out to be right for teenagers, as well as adults and/or kids, it just happens that way. I can only write about what I know and I've never been shy about telling people what I know. As a matter of fact, when I told my mother ... that three of my books were about to be published by a very important publishing house, she thought for a minute, looked up at me and said, `Son, you always did have a lot to say.'" No matter who reads his books, though, Peck considers it extremely important to motivate young people to read. One motivator is to read a chapter out loud to children, suggested Peck, so they will be eager to find out what happens next. "My richest talent is making a kid smile. And getting him to read and write," Peck pointed out in his autobiographical essay. He even takes the time to answer up to one hundred weekly letters from fans in the United States and abroad.

When asked why he includes so much of himself in his writing, Peck related in his Fiction Is Folks that it's "because I've got so much of me to give. Like you, I am abrim with likes, dislikes, talents, cumbersome inabilities, joys, triumphs, and failures ... so why should I even consider wasting such a storehouse?" He went on to say in SAAS that "compared to the worth of so many talented authors, my novels aren't really so doggone great. Yet secretly, I truly believe that I am the best teacher of creative writing in the entire galaxy." And most importantly, he concluded, "Life is fun. It's a hoot and a holler. If you can't revel in America and enjoy all the wonderful Americans you meet, you wouldn't be happy in Heaven or even in Florida."

Historical Context

• The Life and Times of Robert Newton Peck (1928-)
• At the time of Peck's birth:
• Amelia Earhart flew across Atlantic
• Calvin Coolidge was president of U.S.
• Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) was founded by William S. Paley
• Kellogg's introduced Rice Krispies
• A.A. Milne published The House at Pooh Corner
• The times:
• 1939-1945: World War II
• 1950-1953: Korean War
• 1957-1975: Vietnam War
• 1983: American invasion of Grenada
• 1991: Persian Gulf War
• 1992-1996: Civil war in Bosnia
• Peck's contemporaries:
• Leontyne Price (1927-) American opera singer
• Edward Albee (1928-) American writer
• Carlos Fuentes (1928-) Mexican writer
• Gordie Howe (1928-) Canadian hockey player
• Walter Mondale (1928-) American statesman
• Vera C. Rubin (1928-) American astronomer
• Elie Wiesel (1928-) Journalist, writer
• Selected world events:
• 1929: Donald Duncan invented the yo-yo
• 1940: Eric Ambler's Journey into Fear was published
• 1953: Convicted Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed
• 1962: The drug Thalidomide was found to cause birth defects
• 1970: The Star of Sierra Leone was discovered, a diamond weighing 969.8 carats
• 1980: Cable News Network (CNN) went on the air
• 1991: The Soviet Union was officially dissolved
• 1996: The legendary Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas was demolished

Further Reading

• Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 3, Gale, 1990.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 17, Gale, 1981.
• Peck, Robert Newton, Fiction Is Folks, Writer's Digest Books, 1983.
• Something about the Author Autobiography Series, Volume 1, Gale, 1986, pp. 235-247.
• Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, 3rd edition, St. James Press, 1989.
• Twentieth-Century Young Adult Writers, St. James Press, 1994.
• Horn Book, August, 1973; October, 1973; April, 1976; December, 1976.