[This entry was updated by Sylvia Patterson Iskander (University of Southwestern Louisiana) from her entry in the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography, volume 6, pp. 34-51.] "Teen-agers' Laureate," the title conferred upon Robert Cormier...

"Teen-agers' Laureate," the title conferred upon Robert Cormier by Tony Schwartz in Newsweek (16 July 1979), is fittingly bestowed upon this widely read and critically acclaimed author in the relatively new and somewhat amorphous genre referred to as...

Robert Cormier began his life in the French-Canadian section of Leominster, Massachusetts on January 17, 1925. "We lived in a three-story tenement. I remember my mother and father heating up the water so we could take baths. I had a great childhood,...

"Terrorism, suicide, child murder, betrayal, personality destruction, and governmental and religious corruption." They might seem more like topics for television movies-of-the-week than themes for young adult novels, but this is the list of subjects...

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...