Thomas Scofield Handforth (1897–1948) was an American artist and etcher. He wrote and illustrated the book Mei Li about his personal experiences in China and won the 1939 Caldecott Medal

Caldecott Medal

The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children , a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children published that year. The award was named in honor of nineteenth-century English...

. Born in Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...

, he studied at the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

.

Today, Mei Li is a reissue of a book originally published in 1938. Thomas Handforth's magnificent drawings of China in the 1930s are still animated and compelling; the story of Mei Li's Chinese New Year is wordy forced, and sexist by contemporary standards. A Caldecott Medal winner.
He was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1897-1948. He studied art at the University of Washington, and at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in France. He lived in various locations such as Paris, India, North Africa, Mexico and China.
Best known work is Mei Li (1938) which won the Caldecott in ’39. Mei Li is about a girl who escapes her traditional life in the Chinese countryside to visit a New Year’s fair.