Hazel Paris Cederborg was born in 1892 to Charlotte G. Paris and Raphael D. Paris. Throughout her life she worked in education in various forms from elementary to collegiate level. She earned a B.A. (1915) and M.A. in Education from Wellesley College. She taught in New England, Virginia, and Illinois. Hazel is most famously known from authoring Bunny Polka Dot and The Little Red Wagon. She was also an assistant professor of English at Westhampton College in the 1920s.

Her interest in writing first began when her son was a young boy and she discovered she was having a hard time locating interesting educational material for him to read. At the time she was friends with an established author who agreed she had a talent for writing and encouraged her to pursue it. When she first started out she struggled getting her stories published. One of her rejections was from McLoughlin Bros. Inc. in 1940, in which they stated they already had too many animal stories for this year and maybe she should submit her material in the following year. In 1942 she was rejected by Farm Journal and Farmer's Wife because her material was too similar to what they were already publishing. This process would repeat itself all the way into 1949 when she was rejected by Grosset and Dunlap. During this time, she was careful to take notes and learn from her mistakes. She did publish a few stories during this time to The American Home for example, however she was still learning the times that were best to submit. Many times she was simply rejected because she submitted her material at the wrong time of year for the publications. Eventually, she came to understand the publication process and was publishing multiple stories a year. Early on in the process she did get an article published in Writer's Monthly in 1941 entitled, "What the Editor Wants." This article discussed her process when planning to submit an article for publication and what an editor expects to see.

Throughout her life, she wrote numerous articles, informal essays, short stories, articles on family life, and articles for both adults and children. When developing a story, Hazel didn't like to waste paper, so she would use scrap material from her education position to plan out the story before typing. She was a large advocate for immersing children in day to day activities. In Christian Home in 1940 she discussed bringing children into the kitchen and allowing them to participate in meal preparation. She stressed the importance of patience in the parent and allowing the child to learn and use their creativity to solve the problem in front of them. In her later articles she focused on how parents can better understand their teenage children.

After working in higher education, she realized she missed working with young children and took a job in elementary education in District 109 in Deerfield, Illinois. She retired in 1962 but kept working on stories for different organizations well into 1974, such as a biography for Joseph Laurent. She passed away in Feb. 1975 in Highland Park, Illinois.