In Nina Bawden's The Birds on the Trees (1970) a young man named Toby, who is trying to cope with life rather unsuccessfully, states, "Families are terrible"--a perception of family life that defines much of Bawden's work for children. Her child protagonists either have families that do not understand them or else live apart from their families because their parents are ill, abroad, or dead. The misperception of parental intentions, or the complete absence of parents, often establishes the action and conflict in Bawden's work.

Born in London on 19 January 1925, Nina Mary Mabey was educated at Ilford County High School and at Somerville College, Oxford. Upon receiving her B.A. in 1946, she married H. W. Bawden, by whom she had two sons, Nicholas and Robert Humphrey Felix. She worked for Town and Country Planning Associates in 1946-1947, becoming a full-time writer in 1952. After the dissolution of her marriage...