Diana Lee Santamaria has been an early childhood educator for eight years. She has a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education along with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Studies. Diana Lee’s preschool learning books entitled, DLee’s Color Hunt, DLee’s Outdoor Countdown, DLee's First Day of School, DLee's Nighttime Scare, and DLee's Bad Day (Un mal día de DLee) are the first five educational books in her series. As an educator, Diana Lee wanted to create books that were authentic to her students, while enhancing their overall developmental abilities. Thus, she has ensured that the illustrations are bold, fun, and bright with quirky, unique, and diverse characters. As a woman of Hispanic descent, Diana Lee understands that children need to see characters that are representative of themselves. Therefore, diversity is a key element in every character within DLee’s World books. As a child, Diana Lee felt she was unable to relate to a lot of characters in the stories she read and feels that minority children are still underrepresented in books today. In every book Diana Lee has created, you will see a variety of divergent characters from DLee, to her Mommy and Daddy, Rye, Ms. Mayo and so on.


The main character DLee is based on the author’s own physical appearance as a child and “DLee’s World” based on a compilation of her own childhood and experiences as an adult and teacher. Diana Lee’s books encompass her creativity and quirkiness, while still maintaining relevance to her preschool readers, three to five years of age. Her scholastic series aims to answer the educational questions and challenges that her readers face throughout the beginning stages of their lives.