Books of the week: Babar the Elephant

From The New Yorker

Babar is one of the most charming characters I know in children's literature. You've probably heard about him. He's such a star that even The Morgan Library organized an exhibition in 2008 - Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors. Babar is a French fiction character and he's just turned 80 years-old . He's the king of the elephants and he lives in a city named after his wife Céleste, Celesteville, in the middle of the jungle. However, he dresses up and lives like a gentleman.

I've always liked Babar as a child and then as a grown-up I still find him charming, sweet and I enjoy reading his stories (I mean for me, not for the kids). When I went to the exhibition I learnt so many details, about the story of his creation and about his authors, that made him even more interesting to me. Besides I had never seen the first sketches, drawings and first editions. So I was captivated by everything I was seeing and reading that day.

Babar was originally called "Baby Elephant" and it was a story about an elephant who left the jungle after his mother was shot by a hunter. He fled to a big city where he was adopted by a lady - the Old Lady - who taught him how to dress, how to eat properly, and took him to school, among many other things. He then comes back to the jungle and brings "civilization" to his fellow elephants, becoming their king. For the youngsters is a nice story full of adventures with pretty illustrations and where the main characters are animals, which is always a big success among the young crowd. However under a more mature eye we can also find some traces of satire and criticism to the French colonisation, which make the books even more appealing and enjoyable at any age (here I'm referring more to the first ones of the series but almost all of them have a hidden moral message).

I have to confess, that more than the books, what I like the most about Babar is the story of his creation. He was invented by Cécile de Brunhoff for her sons during bedtime. The children liked the story so much that they asked their father, Jean de Brunhoff, who was an artist, to illustrate the "little elephant". Eventually, he ended up writing and illustrating the whole story and this is how Histoire de Babar (The Story of Babar) appeared and was first published in 1931. He then published six other stories before his death in 1937. But what is extraordinary is that Babar didn't die with him, because in 1946, when he was only 21 years-old, Laurent de Brunhoff, an artist as well, decided to take on his father's task and published Babar et ce coquin d'Arthur (Babar's cousin: That Rascal Arthur). He continued to write and illustrate more than 30 books and is still working. Now aged 86 he has just published Babar aux jeux Olympique de Celestevill (Babar's Celesteville games).

Isn't this a great story on how a character was created and maintained alive by a whole family for two generations?

I've just received my copy of Babar et le père Noël (Babar and Father Christmas) and reading it for the kids tonight was a pleasure. I actually read it this afternoon by myself and I could still remember the words, sentences, pictures from when I was young. I think that Babar is one of those characters that stays with you forever and is always a joy to revisit with or without the children. As Adam Gopnik so well puts it in this article that he wrote for The New Yorker "Once seen, Babar the Frenchified elephant is not forgotten".

I haven't read them all and, although I'd love to, I don't own the whole collection. But here are my favorite ones:

  



Because of this book, I still dream on visiting the Sequoia National Park