Beginning of Essay
Robert Cormier was born in 1925 in French Hill, a French-Canadian neighborhood of Leominster, Massachusetts, and has lived in Leominster all his life. The second of eight children, Robert enjoyed a happy childhood in the nest of his close-knit family and community ....

Middle of Essay
.... as one. Later, a teacher at Fitchburg State College was so impressed with one of Cormier's stories that she submitted it to a magazine; it became his first published work. After college, Cormier went on to write commercials for a local radio station, and soon switched to newspaper work. He was a writer and editor at the Fitchburg Sentinel for 23 years, where he won three major journalism awards. He later wrote short stories for popular magazines such as McCall's and the Saturday Evening Post. Cormier married in 1948, and despite his own childhood experiences, he and his wife sent their four children to local parochial schools. Cormier's first three ....