Brock Cole

Last updated

Brock Cole (born May 29, 1938) [1] is an American children's author and illustrator. He is an author and illustrator of pictures books for children as well as a writer of novels and novellas for young adult readers. The subject matter of his juvenile fiction is perhaps more controversial than that of his peers, landing him on the ALA 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books 1990-2000. Though some of his books have been challenged for content, he has become well known for his style and form.

Contents

Born in Charlotte, Michigan Cole spent most of his childhood moving around the Midwest with his family, as his father was a dentist in the army during World War II. Cole attended Kenyon College where he earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1960 and then the University of Minnesota where he earned a PhD in Philosophy in 1972. Before becoming an author Cole was a philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Cole is married to the Classicist Susan Guettel Cole, who taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1975-1992 and the University at Buffalo from 1992-2008. The Coles reside in Buffalo, New York and have two children and two grandchildren.

Bibliography

While he has written many children's books, among them Buttons, he is best known for his novels and novellas for young adults.

Children's books

Young adult books

Illustrations

Cole is said to be "a writer who knows and respects the audience for whom he is writing." [2]

Excerpts

(From Buttons)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Garner</span> English novelist

Alan Garner is an English novelist best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. Much of his work is rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Pullman</span> English author (born 1946)

Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, a fictionalised biography of Jesus. In 2008, The Times named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945". In a 2004 BBC poll, he was named the eleventh most influential person in British culture. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William H. Gass</span> American fiction writer, critic, philosophy professor (1924–2017)

William Howard Gass was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which won National Book Critics Circle Award prizes and one of which, A Temple of Texts (2006), won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. His 1995 novel The Tunnel received the American Book Award. His 2013 novel Middle C won the 2015 William Dean Howells Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Kress</span> American science fiction writer (born 1948)

Nancy Anne Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning novella Beggars in Spain (1991), which became a novel in 1993. She also won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2013 for After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, and in 2015 for Yesterday's Kin. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion Workshops. During the winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Cormier</span> American writer and journalist (1925–2000)

Robert Edmund Cormier was an American writer and journalist, known for his deeply pessimistic novels, many of which were written for young adults. Recurring themes include abuse, mental illness, violence, revenge, betrayal, and conspiracy. In most of his novels, the protagonists do not win.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Dickinson</span> English author & poet (1927–2015)

Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL was an English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Crutcher</span> American novelist and family therapist

Chris Crutcher is an American novelist and a family therapist. He received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2000 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens.

James Edward Marshall was an American illustrator and writer of children's books, probably best known for the George and Martha series of picture books (1972–1988). He illustrated books exclusively as James Marshall; when he created both text and illustrations he sometimes wrote as Edward Marshall. In 2007, the U.S. professional librarians posthumously awarded him the Children's Literature Legacy Award for "substantial and lasting contribution" to American children's literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aidan Chambers</span> British author (born 1934)

Aidan Chambers is a British author of children's and young-adult novels. He won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Printz Award for Postcards from No Man's Land (1999). For his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Holdstock</span> British fantasy and science fiction author (1948–2009)

Robert Paul Holdstock was an English novelist and author best known for his works of Celtic, Nordic, Gothic and Pictish fantasy literature, predominantly in the fantasy subgenre of mythic fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Peck (writer)</span> American novelist (1934-2018)

Richard Wayne Peck was an American novelist known for his contributions to modern young adult literature. He was awarded the Newbery Medal in 2001 for his novel A Year Down Yonder. He received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1990.

Russell A. Freedman was an American biographer and the author of nearly 50 books for young people. He may be known best for winning the 1988 Newbery Medal with his work Lincoln: A Photobiography.

Connie Rose Porter is an African-American writer of young-adult books, and a teacher of creative writing. Porter is best known for her contribution to the American Girl Collection Series as the author of the Addy books: six of her Addy books have gone on to sell more than 3 million copies. In addition, she published two novels with Houghton-Mifflin, All-Bright Court (1991), and Imani All Mine (1999).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Tuttle</span> British writer

Lisa Gracia Tuttle is a British science fiction, fantasy, and horror author. She has published more than a dozen novels, seven short story collections, and several non-fiction titles, including a reference book on feminism, Encyclopedia of Feminism (1986). She has also edited several anthologies and reviewed books for various publications. She has been living in the United Kingdom since 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Selznick</span> American illustrator and writer (born 1966)

Brian Selznick is an American illustrator and author best known as the writer of The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007), Wonderstruck (2011), The Marvels (2015) and Kaleidoscope (2021). He won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration recognizing The Invention of Hugo Cabret. He is also known for illustrating children's books such as the covers of Scholastic's 20th-anniversary editions of the Harry Potter series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Cheuse</span> Novelist, short story writer, critic

Alan Stuart Cheuse was an American writer, editor, professor of literature, and radio commentator. A longtime NPR book commentator, he was also the author of five novels, five collections of short stories and novellas, a memoir and a collection of travel essays. In addition, Cheuse was a regular contributor to All Things Considered. His short fiction appeared in respected publications like The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, among other places. He taught in the Writing Program at George Mason University and the Community of Writers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oisín McGann</span> Irish writer and illustrator, mainly speculative fiction for young people

Oisín McGann is an Irish writer and illustrator, who writes in a range of genres for children and teenagers, mainly science fiction and fantasy, and has illustrated many of his own short story books for younger readers. As of 5 September 2022, his most recent book is about climate change.

Charlotte Agell is a Swedish-born American author for young adults and children who currently lives in Maine. Her second novel, Shift, was featured on the front cover of the Brunswick Times Record in October 2008. In addition to working on novels and children's books, Charlotte Agell also teaches in Maine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. Lockhart</span> American writer

Emily Jenkins, who sometimes uses the pen name E. Lockhart, is an American writer of children's picture books, young-adult novels, and adult fiction. She is known best for the Ruby Oliver quartet, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and We Were Liars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony McGowan</span> English author

Anthony John McGowan is an English author of books for children, teenagers and adults. He is the winner of the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal for Lark.

References

  1. Birthday Bios Archived July 15, 2009, at the Wayback Machine . Children's Literature Network. Retrieved on 2008-02-06.
  2. Glenn, Wendy J. (Winter 1999). "Brock Cole: The Good, the Bad, and Humorously Ironic". The ALAN Review. 26 (2). Virginia Tech. doi:10.21061/alan.v26i2.a.5 . Retrieved 2008-02-06.