Eloise Takes a Bawth - Hardcover

What's this--a new Eloise, never before seen or published? News doesn't get better than that. Kay Thompson first wrote Eloise Takes a Bawth in Italy in the 1960s with Hilary Knight and pal Mart Crowley; it has been marinating until now for a release with all-new drawings by Hilary Knight. Of course, this time Eloise is not in Moscow, not in Paris, she is simply in the bawth at home in the Plaza Hotel. With Eloise, though, nothing is simple. Perhaps especially the notion of taking a bath, where you have to "skibble into the bathroom and take off all your clothes," then strike a pose and look in the mirror, and splawsh, and sing, and bathe with turtle Skipperdee and dog Weenie. And pretend to be the "loosest cannonball in all the Caribbean" and "Little Miss Mermaid but let's keep that between us." But what's this? Could Eloise's bathtime shenanigans be causing a drip that "has begun to drop within the walls and hallowed halls of the stately old Plaza?" Drenching the elite at the Venetian Masked Ball in the Grawnd Ballroom, no less? Fabulously decadent scenes of Eloise enacting wild battles and undersea dives in the bathtub on the "tip top floor" of the Plaza contrast deliciously with the resulting swampy splendor of the ballroom. Extended fold-out cross-sections of the hotel's plumbing system and a spectacular, colorful, double gatefold illustrating the underwater ball ("the sensation of the social season" thanks to Eloise!) add drama and silliness as well. A splawsh indeed! (Ages 6 to 106) --Karin Snelson

Kay Thompson (1909–1998) was a singer, dancer, vocal arranger, and coach of many MGM musicals in the 1940s. The Eloise character grew out of the voice of a precocious six-year-old that Miss Thompson put on to amuse her friends. Collaborating with Hilary Knight on what was an immediate bestseller, Kay Thompson became a literary sensation when Eloise was published in 1955. The book has sold more than two million copies to date. Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight created four more Eloise books, Eloise in Paris, Eloise at Christmas, Eloise in Moscow, and Eloise Takes a Bawth.

Hilary Knight, son of artist-writers Clayton Knight and Katharine Sturges, was educated at the Art Students League, where he studied with Reginald Marsh. Besides the Eloise books, Hilary Knight has illustrated more than fifty books for children, six of which he wrote himself. He lives and works in New York City, not far from The Plaza Hotel.