The game under the tree looked like a hundred others Peter and Judy had at home. But they were bored and restless and, looking for something interesting to do, thought they'd give Jumanji a try. Little did they know when they unfolded its ordinary-looking playing board that they were about to be plunged into the most exciting and bizzare adventure of their lives. Bestselling Polar Express creator and Caldecott Medal winning Chris Van Allsburg explores the ever-shifting line between fantasy and reality with this story about a game that comes startlingly to life.

"All over the city on streets and walks and walls the children ... have established ancient, essential and ephemeral forms of art, have set forth in chalk and crayon the names and images of their pride, love, preying, scorn, desire. ... The Lady in this House is Nuts. ... Lois I have gone up the street. Don't forget to bring your skates. ... Ruby loves Max but Max hates Ruby. ... And drawings, all over, of ... ships, homes ... western heroes ... and monsters ... which each strong shower effaces."So wrote James Agee in 1939. He shared this fascination with children's street drawings and messages with his friend Helen Levitt. Here now are over one hundred of her photographs, made in the years between 1938 and 1948. Most of these pictures have never before been published. They have been selected and arranged by the photographer and carefully reproduced. Robert Coles has written especially for this book an essay on the imaginative live of children and of a time when ". . . children still had some visual independence, some keen-eyed interest in laying pictorial claim to the world around them. ... I have not seen scenes such as Helen Levitt offers in my wanderings through America's city streets twenty and thirty and forty years after these were taken. They offer, then, a look backward--though they are also timeless in certain aspects. For children will never really stop being tempted by their imaginative faculties to show and tell--to let others see what they find themselves conceiving in thought and fantasy and dream."

While Nanny dear unsuspectingly watches her soap opera, and Mr Salomone, the Plaza's manager, prepares for the charity event of the year, Eloise takes a bawth. She bolts the bathroom door with a backbrush and turns on every tap in sight and begins her wilful water mischief in a glamorous fantasy bath world complete with Skipperdee and Weenie to boot. SLAWSH! The Plaza has flooded! The Grand Ball Room is in pandemonium! Who? Who? Who is the culprit? Mr Salomone and the Plaza head engineer follow the flow of water and discover that the trouble began with a certain precocious little girl up on the very top floor - none other than our very own favourite Eloise!