It’s easy to see why Henry Cole is so popular with young readers — he’s a hoot.
At a Friday night reception for Cole and Cynthia DeFelice, this year’s Allen County Young Authors Conference presenters, Cole had the audience in stitches.
He also may be Iola’s biggest fan.
“I was here six years ago and ever since I’ve wanted to come back,” Cole said. “I love this town. I have it in my head to move here.”
A horse and buggy tour arranged for the two presenters gave him a snapshot of Iola which, he said, could be lifted from a Normal Rockwell scene — people were lounging outdoors in porch swings, others casually walked along sidewalks sheltered by overhanging trees and everyone was friendly, a departure from the social indifference he often finds in larger cities.
Cole didn’t start life meaning to be an illustrator.
His mother was a fashion designer in New York City during the Great Depression, when subsistence wages were the rule.
“She didn’t encourage the arts,” Cole said. “She told us kids to be a plumber or a teacher, so we’d always have a job.”
Still, their lives revolved around imagination.
“Mom drew little pictures and hid them and other things for scavenger hunts,” Cole said.
During one, the last prize was old Christmas lights buried in a flower garden.
“We regarded it as a treasure,” Cold said. “Mom had made something exciting out of dead light bulbs,” a knack that etched itself in his mind, and later provided emphasis for kids to find “treasure” in his illustrations.
As an adult, Cole began teaching elementary school and during a visit by an author — “Much like what you do here,” he said — Cole asked where he might find a publisher for an illustrated book he had done about bats — the winged variety. The author stared at him for a bit, enough to cause Cole to cower, and then jotted down the address of a publisher.
The book being published “changed my life,” Cole said, “and showed how an author coming to your school can change your life.”
Young authors from all Allen County schools gathered in Iola Friday and Saturday for time with Cole and DeFelice, and made an immediate impression, Cole said.
“You have great kids here,” he said, which caused his listeners to beam. “They’re really polite, not like some of the really rude kids I run into in the ‘outside’ world.”
