Bob Richley grew up in the Chicago area and now calls beautiful Colorado home. Childhood camping trips in the Rocky Mountains — and a memorable visit to Crater Lake in Oregon — planted in him a deep love of the natural world that has shaped everything he has written since.
A father of two daughters, a longtime children’s ministry volunteer, and a writer with a background in psychology, Richley writes faith-based, Christ-centered fiction for Christian families, homeschoolers, and educators. Teaching children Godly values, grace, and compassion has been the passion behind every story he has told.
His picture books The Big Catch and Runaway Whiskers — part of the Oregon Kids Series — were originally written to help a single mother raise her children with love and grace. That same heart drives his debut middle-grade novel, Redeeming Rhubarb, a thrilling adventure inspired by the real 2013 Boulder, Colorado floods, in which a mouse pup named Strawberry must find the courage to question her father’s lifelong hatred — and help him choose kindness before it’s too late.
Redeeming Rhubarb has earned outstanding reviews from the very first readers to encounter it. Pages & Paws — a reviewer who reads over 400 books a year — called it “one of the finest young adult stories I’ve read in recent memory” and said “if I could score a book above 5 stars, this would be it,” comparing the writing to Beatrix Potter and E.B. White. Readers’ Favorite compared it to Watership Down and Animal Farm and awarded it their highest recommendation.
Bob’s deepest hope is that his stories will be one of many tools that parents, teachers, and homeschool families use to raise children with Godly values — sparking the kinds of conversations that matter most, one book at a time.