About the Author

Diane Phelps BUDDEN
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Author Info

Diane Phelps Budden’s early career started at the local library. She built the children’s collection to attract rural kids who had never used a public library.

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, talkative and smart as a parrot or dolphin. 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 W. Tombaugh’s passion for astronomy helped him find Pluto. He is a great role model for kids and adults. The book celebrates his perseverance and tenacity and the life lessons they provide all of us.

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 to influence parents to read to their kids every day. Life is better with books!

Visit the author at www.dianephelpsbudden.com and visit Arizona’s red rock country and you will be delighted by her raven friends circling overhead.

 

 

 

 

News

Kirkus Review, April 19, 2024

NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK

HOW CLYDE W. TOMBAUGH FOUND AN AWESOME NEW WORLD

by Diane Phelps Budden ; Art Director Tanja Bauerle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 15, 2023

A standout, informative junior biography that celebrates the solar system and self-taught knowledge.

This absorbing short biography explores the life of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the dwarf planet Pluto.

Born to farmers in 1906, Tombaugh and his father and uncle used a Sears telescope to look at the stars in Illinois and Kansas. The budding astronomer, who eventually found Pluto while searching for an imagined “Planet X,” made a better telescope for himself with parts from a Buick automobile. He was eventually hired at the Lowell Observatory because “the observatory was looking for an amateur astronomer willing to work long hours for little pay” in the search for Planet X, which Percival Lowell, the observatory’s founder, was sure existed. Readers are treated to an edifying pastiche of information about the planets, pages from Tombaugh’s observation journals, photographs of Tombaugh and other astronomers, headlines from the New York Times announcing the discovery of Pluto, and much more. Budden ascribes some uncited dialogue to Tombaugh, often using expressions like “HA!” to illustrate his big laugh and sense of humor. The book sticks to the facts and includes plenty of primary sources to provide history and astronomy lovers with visuals, though it doesn’t provide much larger context for early Earthbound space exploration. Addendums provide a glossary, some information about Pluto’s terrain and demotion to dwarf, Tombaugh’s later life, a bibliography (which includes much first-person writing from the subject), and photo credits for all images.

A standout, informative junior biography that celebrates the solar system and self-taught knowledge.

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