乔安娜·柯尔

乔安娜·柯尔（英语：Joanna Cole，1944年8月11日—2020年7月12日），美国儿童文学及科普作家，一生创作了超过250本科普书，其中《神奇校车》系列故事享誉世界。

生平

1944年生于新泽西州纽华克。她的父亲马里奥是房屋油漆工；母亲伊丽莎白是家庭主妇。她在东奥兰治的郊区长大。她从小就热爱科学，并认为阅读科学书是一件很平常的事。小时候，她经常在自家后院观察昆虫和植物。她也喜欢上学，热衷于写科学报告。

1960年代，她曾在马萨诸塞大学和印第安纳大学学习，最终在纽约市立学院获心理学学士学位。经过专业培训后，她成为布鲁克林小学的一名图书管理员。随后，她担任《新闻周刊》通讯员、学乐集团跷跷板读书俱乐部助理编辑、道布尔戴出版社儿童读物资深编辑等职。1971年，她出版了自己的第一本儿童读物《蟑螂》。她的创作理由也很简单，因为当时没有关于这种昆虫的童书。1980年，她成为自由职业者，开始专业从事儿童文学创作，同时为《父母》杂志撰写儿童读物和文章。1980年代，她主要出版了两本亲子读物，《你是怎样来到这个世界的》（1984年）以及《你的新便盆》（1989年）。她说，能够做自己从小就喜欢的事是一种莫大的荣幸。

1985年，她开始创作《神奇校车》系列，并于1986年出版第一本《水的故事》。《神奇校车》系列取得了巨大的成功，并被翻译成多种语言，销售量达数百万本。其中卷毛老师的形象深入人心，陪伴孩子们去探索奇妙未知的世界。《神奇校车》系列还被改编为由莉莉·汤姆琳主演的电视动画节目，自1994年起连续播出了18年之久。2017年，被改编为由凯特·麦金侬主演的Netflix系列网络儿童剧场。该系列的最新一部是《神奇校车：探索人类进化》，在2020年出版。

2020年7月12日因特发性肺纤维化在美国艾奥瓦州苏城逝世。

Joanna Cole (August 11, 1944 – July 12, 2020) was an American author of children's books, best known as the author of the Magic School Bus series, which is illustrated by Bruce Degen and has sold more than 93 million copies in 13 countries. Cole wrote more than 250 books in total.

Early life

Cole was born in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of Elizabeth (Reid), a homemaker, and Mario Basilea, a house painter. She grew up in the suburb East Orange. 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". As a child, she studied insects and plants in her backyard. Cole enjoyed school and also enjoyed writing science reports for class. 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.

In 1965, she married Philip A. Cole. She attended the University of Massachusetts and Indiana University before graduating from the City College of New York in 1967 with a B.A. in psychology.

Career

After some graduate education courses, she became a librarian in a Brooklyn elementary school. 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. She went freelance in 1980, writing children's books and articles for Parents magazine. Her first children's book was about cockroaches and it was published in 1971. Cole decided to write Cockroaches because there had not yet been a book published about the insect, and said "I had ample time to study the creature in my low-budget New York apartment!" 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.

The Magic School Bus

The first Magic School Bus book was written in 1985 and published the following year. She and illustrator Bruce Degen spent over a year per book when they worked on the first 10 titles. 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.

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.

The Magic School Bus has found continued success and has sold millions of copies in multiple languages. The most recent installment in the series is The Magic School Bus Explores Human Evolution (2020). 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.

The book series was adapted into an animated TV show starring the voice of Lily Tomlin (as "Ms. Frizzle"), which ran for 3 years beginning in 1994. In 2017, the books were adapted for a Netflix series starring the voice of Kate McKinnon (as "Fiona Felicity Frizzle"), titled The Magic School Bus Rides Again.

The video game series was published for several other hardware platforms in 1994 until 2010.