That Hilary Knight has some kind of longevity. Ursula Nordstrom had hoped to publish Eloise Takes a Bawth with Thompson but it never happened in her lifetime. With a name like that, I’m actually a little disappointed that I’ve never seen it before. It was called (deep breath) Kay Thompson’s Miss Pooky Peckinpaugh and Her Secret Private Boyfriends Complete with Telephone Numbers. Thompson actually did write at least one children’s book other than Eloise. Here she is posing the portrait of Eloise that hangs in the Plaza. Say what you will about her, though, she knew how to take a picture. interesting story about Eloise’s creator. Parents are absent and she is attended to by her nanny. The plot, I have since learned, is basically just a six-year-old girl living in the fancy dancy Plaza, wreaking havoc and being sweet. Of course, once I became a children’s librarian I met Eloise right and proper. I don’t give a damn who owns it.” This came in 1995 during the height of the Plaza sale that was going on.īaffling to the uninitiated, I can tell you. If I’m not too much mistaken she’s sitting on the bed saying, “I am Eloise. It was by Roz Chast and was called “Eloise Revisited”. Somehow I managed to continue this ignorance well into adulthood, until one day I ran across a baffling New Yorker cartoon. There may be high tea, but heaven only knows where. I was from Michigan! We don’t have plazas in Kalamazoo.

No, honestly, I’d never laid eyes on the character. And when I say, “I didn’t know” I’m not talking about one of those cases where you are vaguely aware of a character, like Peter from The Snowy Day or Max from Where the Wild Things Are. Yet amongst the gatekeepers? Maybe her grip is slipping. From easy books to television shows and movies she’s never been more ubiquitous. What can we extrapolate from a book that previously held the coveted #37 slot on our last Picture Book Poll, falling incredibly to a lowly #76? It’s particularly strange when you consider the sheer plethora of Eloise marketing going on these days.

Eloise books