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Summary
Summary
It's bath time for Eloise in this picture book starring everyone's favorite precocious Plaza Hotel resident.
ELOISE
has
been
celebrated
at
the
PLAZA,
in
PARIS,
at
CHRISTMASTIME,
in
MOSCOW.
Now ELOISE
takes
a
plunge
in
the
BAWTH.
Author Notes
Kay Thompson was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1911, the daughter of a local jeweler. She showed early promise as a pianist; she started to play the piano when she was four, and at sixteen played Franz Liszt with the St. Louis Symphony. Shortly afterward, she appeared as featured vocalist with a local dance band.
Thompson went to California in 1929, when she was seventeen. Her first job was as a diving instructor, but she soon found a job on the radio as a vocalist with the Mills Brothers. Later she joined Fred Waring's band in New York as a singer and arranger. She decided to produce her own radio show, which was aired over the CBS network under the name Kay Thompson and Company. The show was not as big a success as Thompson had hoped and so she signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios as an arranger and composer. Beginning in 1942, she worked with MGM choreographer Robert Alton on such films as The Ziegfield Follies, The Harvey Girls, and The Kid From Brooklyn. She remained with the studio for four years until she created her own night club routine. The show opened at Ciro's night club in 1947 and was successful enough to be taken on the road. That autumn she opened in Chicago and in February 1948 she moved to Miami for a $15,000-a-week engagement. Thompson kept the act going until 1953.
Eloise's birth was unexpected. Thompson prized punctuality, but one day she was late to rehearsals with the Mills Brothers. In a high, childish voice, she made her apology. One of her co-workers said, 'Who are you, little girl?' Thompson replied, 'I am Eloise. I am 6.' The others joined in the game, each assuming a juvenile identity, and it became a regular rehearsal pastime. The routine became a book after Thompson began performing in 1954 in a one-woman show at the Plaza. While she was appearing in the hotel's Persian Room, she was introduced to an artist, Hilary Knight, and he became the illustrator of Eloise, which was subtitled A Book for Precocious Grown Ups. Thompson wrote the book during a three-month break from performing.
Later she wrote three other books about Eloise, which were also illustrated by Knight. In the first two years after Eloise came out, 150,000 copies were sold. According to records beginning in 1983, 592,000 copies of "Eloise" have been sold in the United States since then. Thompson also wrote "Kay Thompson's Miss Pooky Peckinpaugh and Her Secret Private Boyfriends Complete with Telephone Numbers," illustrated by Joe Eula. Thompson also founded Eloise Ltd., which made recordings and other products related to the Eloise character. In later years, Ms. Thompson acted in movies, including "Funny Face," and on television.
Kay Thompson died in July of 1998
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ever-irrepressible Eloise absolutely loves taking a bawth, and her devotees will absolutely love seeing her "splawsh, splawsh, splawsh" her way through a delightfully disastrous-yet ultimately propitious-time in the tub. "You have to be absolutely careful when you take a bawth in a hotel," announces the famous Plaza-dweller, who ignores her own advice and turns on all of the faucets ("Let that water gush out and slush out into that sweet old tub tub tub and fill it up to the absolutely top of its brim so that it can slip over its rim onto the floor if it wants to"). A judicious use of blue on Knight's trademark pen-and-inks traces the flow of water as it seeps from the penthouse through the floors of the Plaza Hotel into the grand ballroom, where workers feverishly prepare for the Venetian Masked Ball. Featuring two gatefold spreads, Knight's drolly detailed pictures depict the hotel's startled guests and employees as water gushes from such unexpected sources as elevator buttons and chandeliers. Oblivious Eloise, meanwhile, blissfully imagines herself driving a speedboat full throttle, water skiing and battling pirates in the Caribbean. A postscript (cleverly presented as a message in a bottle) explains that Thompson and Knight collaborated on this book 40 years ago, and it has been brought to light with the help of playwright Crowley. Since the buoyant art and humorously bubbly text surely rise to the level of its precursors, it's high time this book appeared, "for Lord's sake," as Eloise herself might say. Ages 5-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Primary, Intermediate) For much of 2002, New York City was under a drought warning, but no one seems to have told Eloise. And why would they have, since this fifth volume of her antics, in which she manages to flood the Plaza's Grand Ballroom, was supposed to have been published in 1964, almost forty years ago? In this new, refurbished edition authorized by Thompson's estate, the Plaza's infamous resident is still six years old, still enchant-ingly self-absorbed, and still out of control. Hilary Knight's signature black-and-white line drawings, here accented with blue in addition to the classic red and pink, have lost none of their verve, wit, and panache. While Eloise ""splawshes"" in an overflowing tub and oblivious Nanny watches a soap opera, scenes from which cleverly mimic the watery goings-on outside the TV, the activity in the rest of the hotel is all about getting ready for the Venetian Masked Ball and trying to discover the source of those worrisome drips. The leaks are subtle at first: they spurt from the elevator buttons, plop into a room service beverage, make a small puddle near the histrionic event-coordinator's foot. But, as Eloise gets deeper into her imaginative play, pretending she's a speedboat driver, then a pirate, then a mermaid, the water gets deeper, too. In the end, the Plaza's floors and walls may be ruined, but the ball is saved, with the ballroom (shown in a sumptuous pull-out spread) doing an impressive imitation of a Venetian canal. Kay Thompson may have pulled the plug on Eloise Takes a Bawth in 1964, but Eloise fans will be grateful for her relatives' decision to start the faucet running again. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
PreS^-Gr. 3. Eloise is back, this time in a story suitable to her fame and much better than the last book, which found her in Moscow, for goodness' sake. Apparently ready for publication way back in 1964, this was buried because of "artistic differences." Starting with sketches he originally made 40 years ago, Knight, working with Thompson's heirs and editors, has put together a sprawling, "rawther" amusing tale of Eloise and an ill-fated bath. Nanny tells Eloise not to dawdle in the tub, because the manager of the Plaza Hotel is coming to tea, despite fevered preparations for the Venetian Masked Ball in the "Grawnd" Ballroom. Oh, but Eloise does dawdle. She fills the tub to the "top of its brim, so that [the water] can slip over the rim," which is exactly what it does as Eloise flits in and out of the tub, splishing, splashing, and totally oblivious to the fact that water is seeping, then pouring down into the Grand Ballroom. Thompson's involved rhymed text is enhanced by Knight's inventive artwork, which views the wreckage from every vantage point. Kids will adore seeing Eloise in her room and the wreckage down below, and they'll love the foldout revealing the plumbing of the Plaza. The final spread, showing the Venetian Ball, now authentic because water is flowing everywhere, is an elaborate delight, quite worthy of Eloise. --Ilene Cooper
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1 Up-Irrepressible Eloise continues to confound the staff of the Plaza Hotel with her imaginative and disaster-producing adventures. Nanny informs the mischievous child that she must take a bath as Mr. Salomone, "the sweetest old manager in this sweet old world busy busy busy with the Venetian Masked Ball in the Grawnd Ballroom tonight," is taking a much-needed break and coming for tea. The resulting elaborate pre-tub rituals and an endless soak full of pirates, motorboats, water skis, etc., create major plumbing problems that saturate the hotel and flood the ballroom. However, when Eloise is hauled off by the manager to confront the mess she has made, what do they discover but a highly authentic Venetian celebration complete with floating gondolas and wet but enthusiastic revelers. Knight's witty line drawings capture Eloise's wild imaginings and capricious personality and those fascinated with the underpinnings and plumbing of a huge hotel will find the myriad details fascinating. The two double-gatefold illustrations are awesome. The text and pictures wander all over the page in perfect imitation of this cantankerous heroine. As in her previous adventures, the language is quirky and sophisticated, sometimes difficult to follow, and probably more appealing to adults. A "rawther" necessary purchase where Eloise is wildly popular.-Carol Ann Wilson, Westfield Memorial Library, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
Eloise, aged six, lived with Nanny in the Plaza Hotel in New York when not in temporary stroppy residence in Paris or Moscow, and ordered from room service such essentials as raisins for Skipperdee, her turtle, and straight Johnny Walker Black for Nanny - "And charge it please, thank you very much". Unseen, very far offstage, was her mother, who knew Coco Chanel, and had size three-and-a-half feet and enough AT&T stock to foot the charge-account bills. Eloise was not adorable but she absolutely did not care, because, besides the full days of a child on conversational terms with all the hotel staff and passing pregnant pigeons, she had a rich fantasy life in which her bawth (pronounced "baaaghth", which we assume she borrowed from the speech of that Edwaarghdian English Nanny in her lisle stockings) was the venue for imaginary events - a motion-picture swimstravaganza or a pirate drama starring "the loosest cannonball in all the Caribbean". Eloise herself was imagined by Kay Thompson, who had been vocal arranger and coach to the Arthur Freed musicals unit at MGM (she coaxed out Judy Garland's adult persona and Lena Horne's bold tone). She was also a cabaret performer of genius whose numbers swung to jazz syncopation and scat vocals. Scat was the rhythm of life to Eloise in the first four books in which she starred, 1955-1959, but not in the new book, first scheduled for publication in 1964 but abandoned by Thompson, who did not want to be remembered just for Eloise. Scat, with its wild words and repetitions, shaped both illustrator Hilary Knight's layouts and the movements of Eloise, who, like her creator, was more distinctive of gesture than of face. They were fabulous gestures, those imperious upward and outward flingings of the hands as practised by Eloise, Kay Thompson and, come to think of it, Diana Vreeland, the Vogue fashion empress on whom Thompson based her own performance as Miss Prescott, editor of Quality magazine in the MGM musical Funny Face . Those gestures were about physically projecting the improvisatory voice and the fearless, imperious female personas behind the voice, likely to use a lampshade for a hat, stick out the podgy tum at a fitting with Christian Dior himself, and give the KGB the runaround in cold-war Moscow. Eloise, as we recall her in her prime (visible in The Ultimate Edition , a compilation of the first four books, plus a biographical insert with tantalising sketches of Thompson in Hollywood), was no spoilt infant, but a miniature Thompson or Vreeland. They believed in women as exotics of independent desire and self-determined action. Eloise might be Colette's vagabond heroine Renee, constructing her solo but not lonely life in yet another hotel room, only, oh hecko, because of that charge account, able to have the kitchen send up clams in season. Behind Eloise, along the corridors of Ritzes and Splendides the length of the Riviera, you can glimpse the tougher women of Edith Wharton: when Eloise dines barefoot outside Aux Deux Magots in Paris, she evidently spent le jour telling Simone de Beauvoir what a drip-drip-drip she was to dote on J-P Sartre. If true Thompson devotees feel that the long-desired Bawth does not quite achieve the perfection of the originals, it is because of the modification of the voice - Eloise does not riff as she used to, because Manhattan dames don't jive to scat any more - and of those gestures. It doesn't matter that there are entire spreads where Eloise's presence is implied only by her tub's overflow kerplinking on the ballroom floor below - after all, a grande dame knows that when they've been waiting for your re-entrance for 40 years you don't do more but rawther less. What does matter is that the revived Eloise now moves like a brat practised at acting up for snaps: she's looking to the audience, taking applause in mid-twirl. Knight has fudged the era in which Bawth is set: the dial telephones and the movie star surging into a suite are then, while the latest breaking news on Nanny's telly and Eloise's self-aware gestures date it to the present. And that present is definitely diminished, especially if you're only six. To order Eloise Takes a Bawth for pounds 10.99 plus p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979. Caption: article-eloise.1 If true [Kay Thompson] devotees feel that the long-desired Bawth does not quite achieve the perfection of the originals, it is because of the modification of the voice - [Eloise] does not riff as she used to, because Manhattan dames don't jive to scat any more - and of those gestures. It doesn't matter that there are entire spreads where Eloise's presence is implied only by her tub's overflow kerplinking on the ballroom floor below - after all, a grande dame knows that when they've been waiting for your re-entrance for 40 years you don't do more but rawther less. What does matter is that the revived Eloise now moves like a brat practised at acting up for snaps: she's looking to the audience, taking applause in mid-twirl. [Hilary Knight] has fudged the era in which Bawth is set: the dial telephones and the movie star surging into a suite are then, while the latest breaking news on Nanny's telly and Eloise's self-aware gestures date it to the present. And that present is definitely diminished, especially if you're only six. - Veronica Horwell.
Kirkus Review
Proving herself once again more Force than Child, Eloise wreaks watery havoc upon the Plaza Hotel in an episode announced nearly 40 years ago but never published. Has it been worth the wait? "For Lord's sake," need you ask? After Nanny imprudently tells her to draw her own bawth, Eloise immediately locks the door and embarks on an all-taps-full-on adventure that takes her from ocean's bottom to a battle with Caribbean pirates-and sends water pouring between floors to gush from every fixture, threatening to wash out the Grawnd Ballroom's Venetian Masked Ball. Working from his original sketches, Knight creates splawshy close-ups of the self-absorbed six-year-old bounding balletically about a variety of imagined settings, interspersed with cutaway views of lower floors peopled by soggy guests and panicked hotel staff. The pages are so brilliantly conceived that readers will need to share bawth after bawth just finding the jokes and noticing something new with each soak. When Mr. Salomone, the manager, invites Eloise to tour the destruction, a mahvelous double gatefold opens to reveal-a whirl of floating gondolas, extravagantly costumed performers, and delighted (or at least urbane) guests. Thanks to Eloise, the Ball is the social season's high-water mark. And she knows just what to do about the five-million-dollar repair bill, too: "I'd absolutely charge it." Here's the extraordinary extrovert at her very grawndest (and most destructive); rare is the reader who won't be up for repeat dives into her upper-crust, never-humdrum world. (Picture book. 7+)
