William Rossa Cole was born on November 20, 1919. He was best known as an editor and anthologist, creating nearly seventy-five books, fifty of which were anthologies. Three of his books were honored by the ALA: I Went to the Animal Fair in 1958, Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls in 1964, and The Birds and Beast Were There in 1965.
Of I Went to the Animal Fair, Elizabeth Minot Graves, wrote in The New York Times Book Review, that it is ''the sort of book that children big and small, parents and grandparents would enjoy reading and reciting 'round a winter fire.''
He served in the infantry in World War II and received the Purple Heart. After the war, he was publicity director at Alfred A. Knopf, publicity director and editor at Simon & Schuster and a publisher, with Viking Press, of William Cole Books. Mr. Cole was also a columnist for Saturday Review magazine. He died in 2000, at the age of 80.
