Natalie Babbitt
Natalie Babbitt (born July 28, 1932) is an American writer and illustrator of children's books. For her contributions as a children's writer she was U.S. nominee for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1982.
Biography
Born Natalie Zane Moore in Dayton, Ohio, Babbitt studied at Laurel School in Cleveland and Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She is married to Samuel Fisher Babbitt and the couple have three children, born 1956 to 1960. They lived in his home town of New Haven, Connecticut, when he earned the PhD in 1965 and became the president of Kirkland College in Clinton, New York (1965 to 1978).
The Babbitts collaborated to create The Forty-ninth Magician, a picture book that he wrote and she illustrated, published by Pantheon Books in 1966. Samuel became too busy to participate but editor Michael di Capua at Farrar, Straus and Giroux encouraged Natalie to continue producing children's books. After writing and illustrating two short books in verse, she turned to children's novels, and her second effort in that vein, Knee-Knock Rise, was awarded a Newbery Honor in 1971.
