2. Born July 28, 1932 Natalie Babbitt

3. I was born and raised in Ohio.

4. My mother, an amateur landscape and portrait painter, gave me art lessons. She always made sure I had enough paper, paint, pencils, and encouragement.

5. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fairy tales and myths.

6. I grew up wanting only to be an illustrator. I studied art at Laurel School in Cleveland and at Smith College.

7. Right after graduation, I married Samuel Fisher Babbitt, an academic administrator.

8. I spent the next ten years in Connecticut, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., raising our children, Christopher, Tom, and Lucy.

9. My husband took time out from his academic career to write a novel and discovered that he didn't enjoy the long, lonely hours that writing demanded. My sister produced a comic novel, which required substantial rewriting. I learned three valuable things from observing my husband's and sister's forays into the writer's world:

10. You have to give writing your full attention. You have to like the revision process. And you have to like to be alone. But it was years before I put any of this to good use.

11. In 1966, my husband and I collaborated on a children's book called The Forty-ninth Magician — he wrote it and I illustrated it. With encouragement from our editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, I continued producing children's books even after my husband became too busy to write the stories.

12. I write for children because I am interested in fantasy and the possibilities for experience of all kinds before the time of compromise.

13. I believe that children are far more perceptive and wise than American books give them credit for being.