Jean: French author and illustrator, 1899- 1937
Laurent: French author and illustrator, b. 1925
If there is a universal symbol for childhood, Babar the elephant is probably it. Created by Jean de Brunhoff in the 1930s, continued by his son, Laurent, in the following decades, and available now in every manner of merchandise, the character has enthralled generations of children all over the world with his Victorian rectitude and pachyderm panache.
The inspiration for Babar came from Madame de Brunhoff, Jean’s wife, who told stories about a little elephant to amuse her young children. Their enthusiasm for the tales encouraged their artist father to shape them into illustrated books, beginning with The Story of Babar (1933). Six more Babar books by Jean de Brunhoff followed quickly, including Babar and His Children (1938) and Babar and Father Christmas (1940), which were published after his death.
The original Babar books were oversized in format, with the text printed in script. Subsequent editions have taken every imaginable shape and form, but the luxuriously large volumes are still the best way to fully appreciate Jean de Brunhoff’s mastery of the picture-book form. His books, as Maurice Sendak once observed, “have a freedom and charm, a freshness of vision, that captivates and takes the breath away. . .. Between 1931 and 1937, he completed a body of work that forever changed the face of the illustrated book.”
The elder de Brunhoff’s Babar books were kind-hearted portrayals of family and community life yet, at the same time, unflinchingly direct in their depiction of tragedy. Within the first few pages of The Story of Babar the little elephant sees his mother killed by hunters. He cries but does not tarry in his mourning, fearfill that he too might be shot.
The plot then proceeds briskly, compelling the elephant and perhaps readers as well to go forward and get on with their own lives. Jean de Brunhoff’s tuberculosis was diagnosed in the early 1930s, as he was beginning the books. His failing condition and the fact that he created the books with his own children in mind may well have inclined him to present sorrow in as straightforward a manner as possible, artfully offering consolation to his young audience that even the crudest blows can be survived.
Laurent de Brunhoff was only twelve years old when his father died. He studied art and in 1945 decided that he wanted to continue the series his father had begun. “Babar was a friend to me,” he once remembered. “I had lived with him for years. It occurred to me that I could follow a tradition that had been cut off too early.”
Over the decades, the younger de Brunhoff has written and illustrated dozens of additional Babar stories, creating new characters and often putting the elephant in the service of helping young children sharpen their skills in counting, cooking, color recognition, and the like. His books, though often more pedestrian than inspired, have indeed accomplished what he set out to do: they have kept Babar alive for children who, like Laurent de Brunhoff himself, think of the elephant as part of their family.
A.Q.
Source: Children’s Books and their Creators, Anita Silvey.
Jean de Brunhoff’s Books
- The Story of Babar. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934
- The Travels of Babar. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934
- Babar the King. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1935
- A.B.C. of Babar. New York: Random House, 1936
- Zephir’s Holidays (also published as Babar and Zephir and Babar’s Friend Zephir). New York: Random House, 1937
- Babar and His Children. New York: Random House, 1938
- Babar and Father Christmas. New York: Random House, 1940
