The younger daughter of Ralph Zane and Genevieve Converse Moore, Natalie Zane Moore Babbitt was born on 28 July 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, and spent the first eighteen years of her life in various towns and communities in Ohio. Though her family suffered economic setbacks during her childhood, she remembers that her parents nevertheless managed to provide a secure and pleasant home for their two daughters. Babbitt has remarked that her mother's early influence was especially important. Although she had been one of the new women of the 1920s, had earned a college degree, and showed promise as a painter, her mother had surrendered her ambitions in the interest of her children. She saw to it that Natalie's imagination and artistic talents were encouraged. While her mother read aloud such children's classics as Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1863), which Babbitt detested, and Booth Tarkington's Penrod (1914), Babbitt...