Diane Phelps Budden’s love affair with books started at home at bedtime and at the local library. Her immigrant grandmother who could not read English, “read” the comics to her every Sunday. As a young mother she read to her children at bedtime, and soon became a librarian at the local library. She built the children’s collection to attract rural kids who had never used a public library. Talking with children and nurturing their minds—seeing the rapt little faces glowing with curiosity and joy—created a passion to write stories.

Life intervened and she took a detour to corporate marketing in Michigan before moving to Sedona, Arizona, where she fell in love—with ravens. She wrote about them in Shade: A Story About a Very Smart Raven and The Un-Common Raven: One Smart Bird, cited as a children’s Panelist Pick in the 2013 Southwest Books of the Year. Ravens are rascals—playful as toddlers, and smart as a parrots and dolphins. Watching them soar in pairs through the blue sky is both comforting and inspiring. 
Diane’s latest book for children, Needle in a Haystack: How Clyde W. Tombaugh Found an Awesome New World, is a biography of the self-taught young man who discovered Pluto in 1930 at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Clyde is a great role model for kids and adults alike. The book celebrates his perseverance and tenacity, life lessons for all of us.

When not writing and reading, Diane “makes art.” Formerly a sculptor, she has taken up printmaking. She travels frequently to understand how others live and think.
The author has taught college business classes, and visits schools, libraries, and museums around Arizona to present raven presentations, story hours and workshops about self-publishing. She hopes her passion for books and storytelling will influence parents to develop a love of reading in their children.