Jean Lee Latham

Jean Lee Latham was born and grew up in West Virginia, and she attended West Virginia Wesleyan University. After her graduation in 1925, she went to New York and completed a master’s degree at Cornell University. During her college education and beyond, she wrote plays and taught English and drama classes. After earning her master’s degree, she moved to Chicago, where she set her sights on becoming a radio writer. When World War II began, she joined the U.S. Signal Corps Inspection Agency. Following the end of the conflict, Latham turned to writing fiction for children. Her first book provided the biography of American inventor, Eli Whitney. She eventually wrote more than 40 plays and dozens of books, mostly biographies of notable persons for children and adolescents. She would often use her extensive research on a historical figure and write both a simpler children’s book and a more complex young adult book about the same person. She won the Newberry Award in 1956 for Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. She passed away in 1995 at the age of 93.