Eleanor Frances Lattimore

Eleanor Frances Lattimore (June 30, 1904, Shanghai, China – May 12, 1986, Raleigh, North Carolina) was an American writer and illustrator born in what was called the American Compound in Shanghai and raised in China where her father, David Lattimore, taught English at a Chinese government university. She was the sister of poet and classics translator Richmond Lattimore and China expert Owen Lattimore.

The Lattimores were from the Washington, D. C. area where David Lattimore and his wife Margaret (Barnes) Lattimore had taught in secondary schools. They traveled by steamship to China in 1902 while Margaret was pregnant with their third child, Isabel. The Lattimores' two older children, Katharine and Owen, were born in the Washington, D. C. area; the three younger children, Isabel, Eleanor, and Richmond ("Dick") were born in China.

Eleanor Frances Lattimore came to the United States in 1920 after her father became a professor of Chinese Studies at Dartmouth College. She studied art in Oakland, California, Boston, and New York City and worked for several years as a freelance artist. But she became known as the author and illustrator of more than fifty popular children's books. A number of her stories are based on her experiences growing up in China. Her first book, ''Little Pear'', published in 1931, is considered a children's classic. She continued to be a leading children's book author for most of five decades. Her 57th book, ''Proudfoot's Way'', was published in 1978. "Pink Shoes", a picture book, was published as a paperback in 2016.

Eleanor Frances Lattimore married Robert Armstrong Andrews, a writer and newspaper man, in 1934 and they had two sons, Peter and Michael. The Andrews lived much of the time in Charleston and nearby Edisto Island, South Carolina, and some of her stories are based there and in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Miami, Florida where they also lived. Other stories are based on the adventures of her five grandchildren. Provided by Wikipedia