Betty Miles, the daughter of David D. and Helen Otte Baker, was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1928. She married Matthew B. Miles in 1949, and they now have three grown children: Sara, David Baker, and Ellen. Miles graduated from Antioch College in 1950, and now resides in New York.

Employed from 1958 to 1965 as a publications associate for the Bank Street College of Education in New York, Miles has also taught and written about children's literature and edited the Bank Street Readers. She continues to contribute to magazines, and often travels to schools around the country to talk with librarians, parents, teachers, and students about books. She has written young adult and children's fiction, as well as nonfiction about environmental science and ecological concepts.