Kay Thompson's Eloise

It's a story that lists all of the behaviour of a rather rich girl living in The Plaza, which includes a whole range of absolutely obnoxious behaviour that would otherwise disrupt many people (especially the workers of the hotel). No clear reason for why she lives at The Plaza, as her mother is not present in the story and is barely mentioned. Her only guardian figure is her nanny (who is only called Nanny).

One of the strangest things is that it highlights parental neglect from wealthy families, showing the acceptability of it as long as there are other caretakers around. It does not have anyone address any of the behaviour as being negative beyond other people being randomly (but not consistently) annoyed by it; in fact, I think there was only one or two times where it was shown via illustrations.

Other than a few quotation marks, there is absolutely no punctuation. This makes the book difficult, even as an adult; there were numerous areas where I had to read something out loud to figure out where to break up the lines and make it make sense.

This is yet another book that was brought to me by a student from their school, and it really makes me wonder a few things: Why are the books that kids receive so hopelessly dated? This one is from 1955, and it is rare that students (especially students learning English as an additional language) bring me anything published within the past decade. This isn't to say that we have to throw everything away, but it is curious to me how rarely children in schools get to engage with newer texts or texts that are more relevant to their existence within the world.

I'm also really not a fan of books written by adults about annoying kids. They either write off negative and harmful behaviours as jokes (refusing to engage with how they might negatively impact someone), or they overplay the negative behaviours as being purely the fault of the child who has been left to figure things out for themselves with largely uninterested adults (and if that child is upper class, the behaviours are often left to fester without any engagement regarding how that behaviour is harmful).

Edit 1: Upon learning that this book was originally marketed to adults and then was re-released as a children's book a bit more than a decade after its first publication, it actually makes this book worse to me. (And then there's the whole presumption that Eloise was modeled after Thompson's goddaughter, who was Liza Minelli. Just... what.)

Edit 2: The summary that was used for marketing this book also included the following statement: "She may not be pretty yet, but she’s definitely already a real person." What the hell was wrong with everyone?