Born on April 16, 1891, Dorothy Lathrop grew up in Albany, New York. One of the most important and influential illustrators in the 1930s and 1940s, she began illustrating when she was 27.

An art teacher in Albany, she was soon illustrating magazines and books full-time. She received the very first Caldecott Medal awarded in 1938 for her book, Animal Stories from the Bible, as well as the Newbery Medal in 1930 for the book Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. Ms. Lathrop was a frequent illustrator for Walter de la Mare’s books. She died in December 1980.