There was an outpouring of love and sadness from the children's publishing community when word spread Thursday morning that author Richard Peck had died at age 84. The two-time Newbery Medal winner from Decatur, IL, leaves behind a beloved canon of books for young readers, including A Year Down Yonder, A Long Way from Chicago, The Best Man, and The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail.

Peck at SLJ's 2016 Day of Dialog. Photo ©Tori Soper

He won the 1990 Margaret A. Edwards Award and spoke with Roger Sutton about YA novels, adolescent peer groups, and what kids see in his books. During his speech to accept the award, he said, "Writers write in all the voices we can find, except our own. We strain to hear young voices inaudible to their own parents, voices they fear to raise within hearing of their powerful peers." Peck spoke of the influences that made him a writer in his keynote address at SLJ's 2016 Day of Dialogue in Chicago. "I marched into kindergarten on the day Hitler marched into Poland, but I was better prepared than he," Peck said in his address. "I'd had a mother who read to me and that's why I'm here today." He went on to credit his fourth grade teacher with his successful career, as well. "I am a writer because of a teacher, any writer will tell you that," he said. "Her name was Mrs. Cole and she taught fourth grade in the Decatur system. She taught a class of 42 students in a school swollen by World War II, and I can't ever remember her standing up from her desk, except for once when she came up behind me. There was no librarian at Dennis School, but there was Mrs. Cole, and she handed me a book and said, 'Here, you might try this.' Notice the verb. There was challenge in that word." The book was Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. "I'm here this morning because in fourth grade I could read a 19th century novel cover to cover, not because I was gifted, but because my teachers had the full authority of their classrooms." A memorial service will be held at the New York Society Library on a date to be announced, according to the obituary posted on Peck's official author Facebook page. A private military burial will be held at Graceland Cemetery in Decatur, it said. Peck had a way with words—in his writing and his speeches. His loss is felt in publishing houses, libraries, schools, and the rooms where writers work to create books that engage and entertain young readers. Here is what some who had met him, worked with him, or were impacted by him (or all of the above), had to say: Shannon Hale‏: