RNP

Well, turns out Robert Newton Peck did die, last June. He was 92, meaning he had, as the British would say, a good innings.

Obviously his biggest book was the great A Day No Pigs Would Die. Although the penultimate, heartbreaking moment is when Rob yells at God in frustration "Hear me God, it's hell to be poor!", my favorite line will always be this hysterical one:

She rudely adds that “it’s a wonder you can talk at all...living in this house and all its Shaker ways. You’d get better than a D in English if you were a fearing Baptist.” At these words, Robert’s heart almost stops beating. He has heard about the Baptists, who “put you in water to see how holy you were. . .If you didn’t come up, you got dead and your mortal soul went to Hell. But if you did come up, it was even worse. You had to be a Baptist.”

Ha! I think I've ripped that bit off more than once. He also gave us the great Soup series (and Norma Jean Bissell, the Marcia Brady of books for our pre-teen hearts).

And when are they gonna finally make a movie from A Day No Pigs Would Die? Come on already! Of course, if they did it today Rob would be played by Will Smith's kid, there'd be the inevitable "all the pigs break out into a sing-along in the barn" scene, and instead of dying his dad would cause a slight controversy throughout town by changing his Facebook relationship status to "It's Complicated."