What time of year do you like best?

May is my favorite month.

What is your favorite TV show?

I don’t watch many shows anymore—just CNN News and old movies.

If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want for company?

My husband, Sam.

If you could travel in time, where would you go?

Back to Middletown, Ohio, to Lincoln School on Central Avenue, to live through fifth grade again. And again and again.

What’s the best advice you have ever received about writing?

No one single thing. Too many good things to list.

What do you want readers to remember about your books?

The questions without answers.

What would you do if you ever stopped writing?

Spend all my time doing word puzzles and games, and practicing the good old songs on my piano.

What do you like best about yourself?

That I can draw, and play the good old songs on my piano.

What is your worst habit?

Always expecting things to be perfect.

What is your best habit?

Trying to make things as perfect as I can.

What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

Right now, it’s a picture for a new book that hasn’t even been published yet. It’s a picture of a man in a washtub, floating on the ocean in a rainstorm. I’m really proud of that picture.

Where in the world do you feel most at home?

That’s a hard question. My family moved away from Middletown, Ohio (see the question/answer about time travel), when I was in the middle of sixth grade, and we never went back. Even after all these years, though, Middletown is the place I think of when I think about “home.” I’ve lived in a lot of different places, though, and liked them all, so I don’t feel sorry for myself. It’s just that the word “home” has its own kind of special meaning.

What do you wish you could do better?

Everything. Cook, write, play the piano, everything.

What would your readers be most surprised to learn about you?

Maybe that I believe that writing books is a long way from being important. The most important thing anyone can do is be a teacher. As for those of us who write books, I often think we should all stop for fifty years. There are so many wonderful books to read, and not enough time to get around to all of them. But we writers just keep cranking them out. All we can hope for is that readers will find at least a little time for them, anyway.

Books by Natalie Babbitt

Dick Foote and the Shark

Phoebe’s Revolt

The Search for Delicious

Kneeknock Rise

The Something

Goody Hall

The Devil’s Storybook

Tuck Everlasting

The Eyes of the Amaryllis

Herbert Rowbarge

The Devil’s Other Storybook

Nellie: A Cat on Her Own

Bub, or The Very Best Thing

Ouch!

Elsie Times Eight

An Imprint of Macmillan