MARY LEE KINGMAN NATTI

1919 - 2020

NATTI, Mary Lee Kingman Children's Book Author, Editor, and Folly Cove Designer Mary Lee Kingman Natti, children's book author, editor, and Folly Cove Designer, died at home in Lanesville, Gloucester, MA on May 31, 2020. She was born in Reading, MA on October 6, 1919, to Leland and Genevieve (Bosson) Kingman. She was their only child and grew up in a household of book lovers. Her mother was a prodigious reader and would read to her by the hour. At age six, Lee was writing stories and at age nine, she won a contest for writing ten book reviews, submitted to The Bookshop for Boys and Girls in Boston (the prize was ten books of her own selection). Nothing could have been more rewarding. In junior high she wrote poetry and by the time she reached Reading High School, she had no doubt that "writing was the thing she could do best and it was all she wanted to do." Lee attended Colby Junior College in New London, NH for two years and then transferred to Smith College, where she received a BA in 1940. At 24, she became assistant to the editor of children's books at Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, and when the editor, Grace Hogarth, left for London to be with her family during WWII, Lee stepped in as editor, where she quickly had to master all aspects of publishing. One of the authors with whom she worked was author/illustrator Virginia Lee Burton, who was working on her book Katy and the Big Snow when Lee became her editor. In order to develop her eye for assessing illustrations, Lee took a figure drawing course taught by Virginia Lee Burton's husband, George Demetrios, at his studio in Folly Cove, Gloucester, MA. It was at the home of the Burton-Demetrios family that she met her future husband, Robert Natti, home on leave from the Army. After a wartime whirlwind romance, a marriage proposal after six weeks, two years of letter-writing, and a leap of faith, they were married in 1945. During the war, Lee was part of a group of children's book editors that banded together to exchange information about dealing with wartime shortages and rationing; this group eventually became the Children's Book Council. She launched a career in writing children's books with Pierre Pidgeon, published in 1942 by Houghton Mifflin. She wrote 29 books for children and young adults, many of them set on Cape Ann, where she lived for more than seventy years. In 1948, her first story with a Cape Ann background, The Rocky Summer, was published, followed by The Best Christmas, which she said was inspired by her parents' New England "making-do with what they had" and her husband Robert's Finnish heritage. The Best Christmas is still in print in Japan and many of her other titles have had multiple editions; her books have been published in France, Germany, Finland, Japan, China and Poland. In 1965, her book Private Eyes was a nominee for the Edgar Allan Poe Award in the juvenile fiction category. In the late 1940's, she took a design course taught by Virginia Lee Burton, the founder of the renowned Folly Cove Designers, an artist/crafts guild that produced designs using linoleum blocks printed on fabric. Lee was accepted into the guild and became a core member, spending twenty years creating designs, cutting the blocks, and printing placemats, tablecloths, aprons and skirts during the summer when the Folly Cove Designers "barn" was open. Today, the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester devotes an entire room to the works of this creative group, which disbanded in 1968. In 1999, she was among the first honorees to receive the Walker Hancock Award, awarded by the Gloucester Cultural Council for outstanding contributions to the arts and humanities. Lee had a long association with the Horn Book, serving on the Horn Book Council. She edited two Horn Book volumes about the winners of the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, co-edited two books about Illustrators of Children's books for the Horn Book, and edited The Illustrator's Notebook, a compilation of articles from the Horn Book about illustration. She also created beautiful little calendars for the Horn Book featuring select illustrators' works for several years. She is survived by her daughter Susanna Matilda Natti and son-in-law, Alan Willsky; by her son Peter Eino Natti and his companion Lauri Fielding; by two granddaughters, Lydia Ciollo and Kate Willsky, two grandsons-in-law, Joseph Ciollo and Michael Portanova, and three great-granddaughters, Rose, Audrey, and Eva, as well as by many nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews. A Memorial Service will be planned for a future date. To remember her, she'd ask that you read a good book and see the beauty around you. If you wish to contribute to an organization in her name, you might choose The Cape Ann Museum, the Sawyer Free Library, or the Open Door, Gloucester, MA. Condolences at www.campbellfuneral.com

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