Books have a strange kind of magic that makes you forget you’re learning. Particularly when it comes to science, a subject that, if you let it, can come across as clinical and icy on paper, few authors have ever managed to accomplish that. Joanna Cole refused to allow it. Her name is rarely mentioned when discussing the legends of children’s literature, despite the fact that she spent decades making the universe seem like the most thrilling place a child could possibly visit.
Bruce Degen created the illustrations for Joanna Cole’s book The Magic School Bus. According to reports, the two of them—Cole writing and Degen drawing—spent well over a year on each of the first ten books, which were published in 1986. In publishing, particularly in children’s publishing, where the pressure to produce can be unrelenting, you don’t always see that kind of slow, deliberate care.
Cole was raised in East Orange after being born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1944. As a child, she was fascinated by science and studied plants and insects in her backyard in the same way that other children might have gathered trading cards. Cole once recalled a childhood teacher who allowed students to check out her science books on a weekly basis. Cole came away from that experience with the sincere belief that reading science books for pleasure was just something people did. Although it’s a minor detail, it conveys a lot. Decades before anyone had heard of Walkerville, the seeds of Ms. Frizzle were sown in that elementary school classroom.
Cole held positions as a librarian at a Brooklyn elementary school, a letters correspondent at Newsweek, and an editor at Scholastic prior to becoming one of the most well-known names in children’s literature. In 1980, she started writing full-time as a freelancer. Her first children’s book, which was published in 1971, was about cockroaches. She chose this topic in part because there wasn’t a book about them yet, and in part, she jokingly acknowledged, because her cheap New York apartment provided her with a wealth of research material. Her entire career would be defined by her innate desire to fill in the blanks and discover the tale no one had yet to tell.
To be honest, Cole was scared when she started the first Magic School Bus book. To avoid the blank page, she answered letters, ran errands, and cleaned out closets. Knowing that authors who go on to sell 93 million books in 13 countries still struggle at first is somewhat comforting. In the end, she wrote it anyhow, and looking back, the remainder seems almost inevitable, even though nothing ever is.
Lily Tomlin voiced Ms. Frizzle in the 1994 animated television adaptation of the series, which turned out to be one of the most creative casting choices in the history of children’s television. By the time the show ended its run on PBS in 1997, it was one of the network’s top-rated shows for viewers of school age. It would later be cited by scientists as a factor in their career choices. There’s something subtly amazing about that: decades later, a children’s book series inspired by a woman’s passion for backyard insects is encouraging people to pursue careers in biology, chemistry, and astrophysics.
The Magic School Bus Rides was the Netflix revival of the franchise in 2017. Once more, with Lin-Manuel Miranda updating the theme song and Kate McKinnon playing a younger Frizzle. Since 1994, a lot had changed in the world, but the show’s inspiration remained the same. Children still needed someone to turn science from a chore into an adventure.
Cole passed away from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis on July 12, 2020, at the age of 75. She continued to write until the very end, working with her longtime friend Stephanie Calmenson on several book series. The Magic School Bus Rides Again’s final seasons were devoted to her. By that time, she had authored over 250 books, a collection of writings that, when considered as a whole, resembles a lifelong argument that the most crucial lesson a child can learn is to be curious.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the best children’s writers are frequently those who have never fully grown up. Cole spent the rest of her life attempting to do the same for everyone else’s children after studying bugs in her backyard and discovering a true teacher who inspired her. She wrote more than just The Magic School Bus. She never let go of her deep understanding of what it was like to wonder about the world.
