Eloise

Bruce Handy is barking mad.  Well, not entirely.  His essay on Where the Wild Things Are has some fair points about the book's status as a totem, and how it's not entirely accessible to kids who grew up in families where anger was either repressed, or expressed in a generally healthy way.  But anyone who maligns my beloved Eloise by saying "girls love the idea of Eloise, but has anyone ever made it to the end of Kay Thompson’s long, bossy, punishingly fabulous text?" is dead wrong about something.  Girls, at least this girl, adored Eloise.  She was lonely, clearly, but also incredibly self-sufficient, her fabulousness creation and compensation both.  Her fold-out map of the Plaza is one of my favorite single pages of a book of all time.  And Eloise in Paris is fabulous too, in an entirely unpunishing way. Maybe it's a girl thing.  But when it comes to this girl, Bruce Handy better back up off her.