Joanna Cole (author)

Joanna Cole (August 11, 1944 – July 12, 2020)[1] was an American author of children's books,[2] best known as the author of the Magic School Bus series, which sold more than 93 million copies in 13 countries.[3] She wrote over 250 books, ranging from her first book Cockroaches to her famous series Magic School Bus, which is illustrated by Bruce Degen.

For the British artist and illustrator, see Joanne Cole.

Joanna Cole
BornJoanna Reid Basilea
(1944-08-11)August 11, 1944
Newark, New Jersey, U.S.
DiedJuly 12, 2020(2020-07-12) (aged 75)
Sioux City, Iowa, U.S.
Occupation
  • Author
  • librarian
EducationCity College of New York
Notable worksThe Magic School Bus

Early life

Cole was born in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of Elizabeth (Reid), a homemaker, and Mario Basilea, a house painter.[4][5] She grew up in the suburb East Orange.[3][6] She loved science as a child, and had a teacher that she says acted a little like Ms. Frizzle, but that she did not resemble her physically because her teacher looked "very conservative". Her teacher let students check out one of her science books each week and Cole stated, "I thought that reading science books for pleasure was an ordinary thing".[7] As a child, she studied insects and plants in her backyard. Cole enjoyed school and also enjoyed writing science reports for class.[6] Her favorite book as a child was titled Bugs, Insects and Such which was a gift from her aunt because Cole liked to watch insects in her backyard.[8]

She attended the University of Massachusetts and Indiana University before graduating from the City College of New York with a B.A. in psychology.[9]

Career

After some graduate education courses, she became a librarian in a Brooklyn elementary school.[10] Cole subsequently became a letters correspondent at Newsweek, then associate editor for the SeeSaw book club at Scholastic, and then a senior editor for Doubleday Books for Young Readers.[11][12] She went freelance in 1980, writing children's books and articles for Parents magazine.[10] Her first children's book was about cockroaches and it was published in 1971.[7] Cole decided to write Cockroaches because there was not a book written about the insect at the time.[13] She decided to write children's books full-time in 1980. Two of her books were written for parents to read with their children, with the titles being How You Were Born (1984) and Your New Potty (1989). Cole always kept the emotional level of her readers in mind when writing children's books. She stated that it is a privilege to have a career doing what she enjoyed as a child.[6]

The Magic School Bus

The first Magic School Bus book was written in 1985 and published the following year.[14] She and illustrator Bruce Degen spent over a year per book when they worked on the first 10 titles.[7] Cole was nervous about starting the first Magic School Bus book, stating, "I couldn't work at all. I cleaned out closets, answered letters, and went shopping anything but sit down and write. But eventually I did it, even though I was scared". She also said that she wanted to write science books that told stories which readers would enjoy even with no science aspect.[13]

When writing a Magic School Bus book Cole wrote the text first, then she and Degen went over each page. She also wrote more words on removable tape which she placed over those she had previously written. If she did not like something she had written, she figured that she might like what was on the tape instead.[15]

The Magic School Bus has enjoyed continued success and has sold millions of copies in multiple languages.[3][16] The most recent installment in the series is The Magic School Bus Explores Human Evolution (2020).[17] Cole said that her favorite The Magic School Bus book is Inside the Earth, in which the character Arnold confuses a piece of Styrofoam with dirt on it as a rock and brings it to class, similar to an incident involving Cole's daughter.[7]

The book series was adapted into an animated television show starring Lily Tomlin, which ran for 18 years beginning in 1994. In 2017, the books were adapted for a Netflix series starring Kate McKinnon, titled The Magic School Bus: Rides Again.[3]

The video game series was published for several different hardware platforms in 1994–2010.

Honors and reception

Most of Cole's books became ALA Notables and received NSTA/CBC Non-fiction Awards. Cole received the Washington Post/Children's Book Guild for her non-fiction children's books in 1971.[6][18] Her books A Cat's Body and A Bird's Body were selections for the Junior Literary Guild.[18]

A 1988 review in The New York Times of The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth (second book in the series) said:[19]

The author Joanna Cole and the illustrator Bruce Degen have come up with the freshest, most amusing approach to science for children that I've seen...Elementary school science should never be the same again after the Magic School Bus series is completed.

An author spotlight in the book Valerie & Walter's Best Books for Children 2nd Ed: A Lively, Opinionated Guide stated, "If Joanna Cole had contributed nothing to the world of children's books other than her Magic School Bus books, her popularity would still be assured".[20]

Death

Cole died on July 12, 2020, at the age of 75, of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.[3][21] Her frequent collaborator Stephanie Calmenson wrote a tribute which states, "Losing Joanna, we lose the chance to share Ms. Frizzle’s latest science adventure with children, making them laugh and helping them better understand the world they live in".[22] Until her death, Cole continued to write books on many subjects for a range of ages, and collaborated on many books with Calmenson, including the Ready, Set, Dogs! series and The Adventures of Allie and Amy series.[22][23][24]

gollark: The alternative is using the GT 710 in my server.
gollark: ... not *too* much?
gollark: Unrelatedly, *wow* does GPU computing make my laptop warm.
gollark: freedom goodauthoritarianism bad
gollark: https://lucasnorth.uk/sapply/

References
  1. "Joanna Cole: biography". Scholastic Books. Archived from the original on October 7, 2012. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
  2. "Cole, Joanna". WorldCat.org. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
  3. Perez, Lexy (July 16, 2020). "Joanna Cole, Author of 'The Magic School Bus' Book Series, Dies at 75". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  4. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/books/joanna-cole-dead.html
  6. Anita Silvey (1995). Children's Books and Their Creators. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 154. ISBN 0-395-65380-0.
  7. "Magic School Bus makes a stop in Ottawa". The Ottawa Citizen. September 10, 1999. p. 37. Retrieved July 16, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. "Just Book It". Battle Creek Enquirer. June 18, 1996. p. 13. Retrieved July 16, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. "Joanna Cole (1944–) Biography". JRank.org. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
  10. Orange, B. Alan (July 15, 2020). "Joanna Cole Dies, The Magic School Bus Creator Was 75". Movieweb. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  11. Tsioulcas, Anastasia (July 15, 2020). "'The Magic School Bus' Series Author Joanna Cole Has Died". NPR. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  12. "Joanna Cole Papers". Archives & Special Collections, UConn Library. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  13. Greg Young (November 2004). A Guide for Using The Magic School Bus Inside a Hurricane in the Classroom. Teacher Created Resources. pp. 4–. ISBN 978-1-57690-089-5.
  14. "A Guide to the Joanna Cole Papers". University of Connecticut. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  15. "Aboard The Magic School Bus". The South Bend Tribune. April 1, 1992. p. 123. Retrieved July 16, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. Gargiulo, Susan (October 25, 1995). "The Message Is the Medium". Education Week. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  17. Flock, Elizabeth (September 6, 2019). "The Magic School Bus is back — and it's tackling evolution". PBS. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  18. "About the author (1986)". Scholastic. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  19. Bouton, Katherine (December 7, 2018). "CHILDREN'S BOOKS/SCIENCE: The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth". NYT. Retrieved March 19, 2020. Elementary school science should never be the same again after the Magic School Bus series is completed. Just as Sesame Street revolutionized the teaching of letters and numbers by making it so entertaining that children had no idea they were actually learning something, so the Magic School Bus books make science so much fun that the information is almost incidental.
  20. Valerie Lewis; Walter M. Mayes (March 2004). Valerie & Walter's Best Books for Children 2nd Ed: A Lively, Opinionated Guide. HarperCollins. pp. 51–. ISBN 978-0-06-052467-8.
  21. "'Magic School Bus' author Joanna Cole dies at age 75". WSVN 7News. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  22. "Friends, Collaborators Remember Magic School Bus Author Joanna Cole". School Library Journal. July 15, 2020. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  23. "Stephanie Calmenson Children's Book Author". Official author website. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  24. "Stephanie Calmenson Children's Book Author". Official author website. Retrieved July 16, 2020.

Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators https://www.scbwi.org/remembering-joanna-cole/

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