Author

Jean Lee Latham

1902-1995 · American writer of biographies and historical fiction for young readers

About Jean Lee Latham

Jean Lee Latham (1902–1995) was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia. She worked for years as a playwright, radio scriptwriter and editor before turning to biographies and historical fiction for young readers. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, her best-known book, won the Newbery Medal in 1956; she went on to write many more lives of scientists, explorers and inventors for children.

Notable works

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (1955)
Young Man in a Hurry: The Story of Cyrus W. Field (1958)

On this site

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

Jean Lee Latham

1955 · Postwar Contemporary · Novel

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is a fictionalized biography of Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838), the self-taught Salem mathematician whose New American Practical Navigator became the standard American guide to navigation at sea. It opens in Salem, Massachusetts, during the Revolutionary War, when Nat is a small boy in a seafaring family led by his father, Captain Habakkuk Bowditch.

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