I was very sad to get the news that Richard Peck died late last night after a long illness which, goodness, did he battle! He spent his last year doing everything he loved the best, almost all of which involved great feats of travel. Horn Book articles by and about this inimitable writer (I think he had the most distinct voice in the business) are many, and Katie and Elissa will be pulling those together, but for now you can hear him clearly in his 2007 Sutherland lecture. We were friends since the early 1980s, and I was so happy when he (finally, he would add, in a murderous undertone) won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor for The Best Man, his last novel, published in 2016. That book is an excellent primer in the Peck style: dry and aphoristic but completely unembarrased to go for the tear ducts as well as the jugular (and, always, the funny bone). And to preach: Good Lord, could he preach, ostensibly a no-no in our field but done by Peck with such aplomb, certainty, and good humor that you settled in without fidgeting.

I last saw him at Christmas, when my Richard and I took him to visit his adored Sophie Blackall in Brooklyn. If anyone had more friends than Peck I'd be surprised; he found them everywhere and kept them forever. I'm glad to have had a last great evening with him.