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Self-Censorship and Parenting

Conference Talk Draft for the Children's Book Council of Australia

This six-page marked typescript reconstructs the May 1992 speech Robert Cormier made at the Children’s Book Council of Australia. Cormier shares his feelings of loss at the passing of two influential people in his life: author Graham Greene, and his mother, Irma Cormier. He then describes the circumstances of his first paid publication made possible through the initiative of one of his college professors. He ruminates on why, despite his age, many young readers take up his books with fervor before he thanks librarians and teachers. He then recounts the circumstances that inspired The Chocolate War and his and his wife Connie’s style of parenting. Later portions of the typescript discuss his thoughts on censorship that also appeared in his essay “A Book is Not House” published that same year in Donald Gallo's anthology Authors' Insights: Turning Teenagers into Readers and Writers.

RELATED LINKS:

Barbara Hotelling's article "Styles of Parenting" in The Journal of Perinatal Education
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1595189/

Information about The Children's Book Council of Australia
http://cbca.org.au/default.aspx?contentID=581