We remember Joanna Cole, author of The Magic School Bus series (1944-2020)

The children’s book author and creator of the beloved Magic School Bus series Joanna Cole has died aged 75, due to complications arising from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Joanna Cole

Born on the 11th of August, 1944, in Newark, New Jersey, Cole was a lover of science from a young age. She carried that love of learning into her career, graduating from the City College of New York with a B.A. in psychology before becoming a librarian in an elementary school in Brooklyn. Cole then became a letters correspondent for Newsweek, before moving into the book industry as an associate editor for the SeeSaw book club at Scholastic. She later worked as a senior editor for Doubleday Books for Young Readers, before going freelance in 1980 as a writer of children’s books and articles for Parents magazine.

Joanna Cole wrote many children’s books over the course of her life, the first being Cockroaches in 1971. She was best-known, however, for The Magic School Bus series, the first of which was written in 1985 and inspired by a science teacher she had as a child. Cole teamed up with illustrator Bruce Degen at Scholastic to publish the book in 1986, going on to write thirteen more books in the original series as well as numerous spin-offs, the most recent of which is The Magic School Bus Explores Human Evolution. The series has gone on to sell millions of copies worldwide and was eventually adapted into an animated series starring Lily Tomlin as the delightful Ms. Frizzle. Debuting in 1994, the show was on air for 18 consecutive years and was shown in over 100 countries.

Bruce Degen said, “What Joanna has meant to the world, what there is in the world because of her, is well known. What she meant to me I can’t describe. Everyone who knew her, worked with her, loved her, knows what a loss it is.”

Click here to see more books by Joanna Cole.

No comments Share:

About the Contributor

Olivia Fricot

Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.

Follow Olivia: Twitter