My Favorite Chaperone

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1942, Jean Davies Okimoto is a psychotherapist and children’s author based in Seattle, Washington. Okimoto started her journey as a writer in 1953. She published her first children’s book, My Mother is Not Married to My Father in 1978, motivated by her children’s difficulty coping with her and her first husband’s divorce. Her second book, It's Just Too Much, is about second marriages and step-siblings, inspired by her second marriage to Joe Okimoto in 1973. This book won the Washington State Book Award, and she has won many awards since then for her books.

Okimoto never set out to write children’s or YA literature and also knew that she could not depend on being a writer because of the low and unsteady income. Because of that, she pursued another area of interest: psychotherapy. Her 35-year-long career as a psychotherapist gave her insight into the minds of young people and inspired and enriched her writing. Commenting on the two careers complementing each other, she wrote: “As a therapist, you unfortunately can't always count on a happy ending for all clients as much as you hope for one, but it was cathartic to know I could always make things come out all right for the characters in my books” (“