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Not long after Diane was born, her parents divorced. Her mother, a big-city gal at heart, picked up and moved to New York City. There they lived in a brownstone in the West Village which later served as the setting for her mother's first mystery novel, Murder Leaves a Ring, published in 1950. The book was dedicated to Diane. Years later, Diane dedicated her first work as an author, The Conversation Club, to her mother. And some years after that, they did a book together, The Last Princess (Fay (Diane's mother) wrote it, Diane illustrated it), which they dedicated to one another.
Diane decided to become a Medical Illustrator. In order for her to be accepted into one of the graduate programs in that field, she needed to take a lot more art plus a number of pre-med classes like Organic Chemistry and Embryology. Towards this goal, Diane spent a year at the University of Texas and another at the Edinburgh College of Art in Edinburgh, Scotland. While in Scotland, she spent her Christmas break traveling in Russia–which was very much behind the Iron Curtain in those days–and became fascinated by Russian history and literature. This later inspired Diane to write the first in her series of biographies for children on a Russian theme, Peter the Great.
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Mike Thaler, born in Los Angeles, started his professional career drawing cartoons for adults. A children's book editor saw one of his cartoon stories in a national magazine and encouraged Mike to try writing for children. His first attempt met with success, and "The Magic Boy" was published in 1961. Mike has produced many well known and loved characters in children's literature. He was the creator of The Letterman for the PBS Electric Company series. Elementary teachers read about Mrs. Green from The Teacher from the Black Lagoon and the rest of the Lagoon faculty in his expanding book series with Scholastic publishers. Bubba and Bumpo from the The Bully Brothers books and some of his retold fairy tales like Cinderella Bigfoot have won numerous Children’s Choice awards.Mike has produced over 150 published books and is known as America’s Riddle King. He has also been called The Court Jester of Children’s Literature.
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