Buffalo's Brock Cole is gifted in both writing and illustrating
His expressive ink drawings bring to life the pampered pooch of Tor Seidler’s wonderful new children’s novel, “Gully’s Travels.”
His Young Adult novels have won wide critical acclaim; “The Goats” has the distinction of a spot on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 Most Challenged Books of 1990-2000.
Brock Cole, 70, is one of those remarkable people equally gifted at both writing and illustrating.
Yet he says of this talent that in some ways: “It’s a curse.”
He elaborates: “I can’t do both at the same time. What looks most attractive is what I’m not doing now.”
Cole writes and draws in the airy attic studio of the Elmwood Avenue area home he shares with his wife, Susan, who retired in May as a classics professor at the University at Buffalo. A skylight directly over his computer lets in the gray light of a late October afternoon. Bookshelves along one wall include translated editions of his books: novels “Celine” in French and Greek, “The Facts Speak for Themselves” in Danish, picture book “Lanky
Mavis” in Japanese. Cole was approached by Michael di Capua, publisher of his own Scholastic imprint, about illustrating “Gully’s Travels.” Written from a dog’s point of view, the book tells the heartwarming tale of a Lhasa apso who leads a pampered life in a Fifth Avenue apartment until his owner decides to get married, handing Gully off to the doorman and the shock of a chaotic household in Queens. After an incredible journey, Gully learns the true meaning of home.
Although Cole doesn’t often illustrate books written by others, he was drawn to Seidler’s story. “It was very moving. You know it isn’t pitched just for kids. There are things in there adults will like. That’s really a good thing. Generally speaking, in children’s literature, you should err on the side of writing up to them rather than down.”
Cole’s only reservation about the book was “I’d never spent much time drawing dogs,” he said. “I don’t know whether I’ve ever seen a Lhasa apso in the flesh.”
He shows off a fat sheaf of Gully drawings, all in brown ink, that took almost a year to complete. One reason it took so long: “We’d just gotten really started on the project when I came off my bike and broke my hand.”
The project was different because he didn’t sketch out a dummy first.; di Capua “wanted the drawings to be kind of free and gestural and he wanted me to just go through and sketch things and draw things.” Cole worked in pen, producing hundreds of drawings. “I flew to New York with a great bundle of paper. Then we decided which ones we’d use.” In a note accompanying an advance copy of the book, Seidler wrote: “It was certainly fun to look at the world from a dog’s point of view. Nor did the fun end when I finished the last chapter. Then I got to watch Brock Cole’s marvelous illustrations come pouring in, adding a whole new dimension to Gully’s travels and travails.”
A native of Michigan, Cole taught philosophy for several years at the University of Wisconsin when he quit to try his hand at painting in 1975 and began writing and illustrating books for children. He cites as influences Margot Zemach, Edward Ardizzone, Maurice Sendak and “Winnie the Pooh” illustrator Ernest H. Shepard.
Cole’s first picture book, “The King at the Door,” was published in 1979. “You see how regular the lines are, I was so timid,” he says. The distinctly original picture books he has written and illustrated include “The Giant’s Toe,” the tale of a giant who accidentally cuts off his toe, which develops a character of its own, and “Fair Monaco,” in which three girls enter their grandmother’s troubled dreams and make her worries go away.
Some of his early books began as stories he told his sons; now he can share them with his grandchildren. Son Joshua teaches French history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and has two children, Lucas, 8, and Ruby, 6. Tobiah is a painter and lives in Athens, Ga. Cole’s evocative novels have drawn much critical praise.
“The Goats,” published in 1987, is a survival-adventure story about two 13-year-old outcasts, a boy and girl, who are stripped of their clothes by bullies at summer camp and left on an island, then learn confidence as they deal with the situation without help from adults. “The Goats” was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book.
“Celine” in 1989 was named a Best Book of the Year by the School Library Journal. In a 1990 review in the New York Times Book Review, Lynn Freed called “Celine” a “rare delight” as “a novel that doesn’t set out deliberately to instruct, uplift, comfort, amuse or expand the horizons of those readers known, perhaps condescendingly, as ‘young adults.’ Yet it manages to accomplish all this and much more simply by telling a fine story about an unforgettable character.”
His third novel, “The Facts Speak for Themselves,” published in 1997 after the Coles had moved to Buffalo, starts with a murder suicide and then the heart-rending story of a 13-year-old girl who has been abandoned or abused by the adults in her life. It was nominated for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
Although Cole confesses he was a bit “apprehensive” about moving here from Chicago in 1992 when his wife was hired at UB, he says: “I’ve grown to love Buffalo.” He and his wife shop at the nearby Lexington Co-Op. “This neighborhood and there are others like it I’m sure are still neighborhoods. There’s a great variety of people. Not everyone’s rich. Not everyone’s poor.”
He’s an avid bicyclist. “One of my favorite rides is downtown on the weekend, the area where the old grain elevators are. We go across to Canada, ride along the path there. It’s wonderful.”
His next project will be a novel. “I’ve got two more to finish,” he said.
He doesn’t write with the “Young Adult” designation in mind. “The truth is I pick characters of a certain age. I don’t particularly write any more for an age, I let the books find themselves.”
From the book
“Gully’s Travels”
by Tor Seidler (pictures by Brock Cole, Michael di Capua Books/ Scholastic, 192 pages, ages 8 and up.)
EXCERPT: (Gulliver has just been deposited in Queens and is trying to figure out what’s going on, when a pizza deliveryman arrives):
“A man in a red-and-white striped shirt came into view carrying three flat white boxes, which he set on the table by the boom box. Carlos gave the man some money and opened the top box. Gulliver’s heart quaked. Inside the box was a bloody pulp. It all came clear to him. Carlos had hired the man in the striped shirt to kill the professor, and now the man was delivering the remains in these boxes. For the second time in less than half an hour, Gulliver blacked out.”
