Jean Lee Latham was born in
Buckhannon,
West Virginia. Her
father George R. Latham was a
cabinetmaker and her mother Winifred Brown was a teacher. Her first book for children was
The Story of Eli Whitney. Her book
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch won the
Newbery Medal in 1956.
WorldCat reports that 12 of her 13 books most widely held in participating libraries are biographies of Bowditch (fictionalized), Eli Whitney,
Samuel Morse,
Rachel Carson,
Elizabeth Blackwell,
Francis Drake,
Cyrus W. Field,
Sam Houston (two, one brief and one fictionalized),
David Farragut,
John Ericsson, and
James Cook. The other,
This dear-bought land (1957), features "a fifteen-year-old boy [who] joins the expeditionary force that hopes to establish a permanent English colony in Virginia." Latham's papers are in the University of Minnesota Libraries collection. ==Awards==