Laurent de Brunhoff (1925–2024), longtime Babar author and artist
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3 min readLaurent de Brunhoff was a French author and illustrator who carried on the work of his father, Jean de Brunhoff, the creator of Babar the Elephant.
Died: March 22, 2024 (Who else died on March 22?)
Details of death: Died at his home in Key West, Florida of complications from a stroke at the age of 98.
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Laurent de Brunhoff’s legacy
De Brunhoff was a young boy when his father, Jean, began drawing pictures of Babar, based on bedtime stories told by de Brunhoff’s mother, Cécile. De Brunhoff’s father soon turned the drawings into the first Babar book, 1931’s “L'Histoire de Babar: le petit éléphant” (“The Story of Babar: The Little Elephant”). Jean died unexpectedly in his 30s after writing only seven “Babar” books; the last two were published posthumously, with the drawings colored by his then teenaged son.
De Brunhoff studied art as a young man, intending to paint, but it wasn’t long after his father’s death that de Brunhoff decided to carry on his work. He taught himself to draw Babar in his father’s style, and he published his own first “Babar” book, “Babar et ce coquin d’Arthur” (“Babar’s Cousin, That Rascal Arthur”), in 1946. Over the next seventy years, de Brunhoff wrote dozens more “Babar” books; the most recent, “Babar’s Guide to Paris,” was published in 2017.
Having written almost 40 more “Babar” books than his father, de Brunhoff was largely responsible for making the friendly elephant famous across the world. He helped bring Babar to the movies and television, and he kept the character current by sending Babar to the U.S. in his travels, offering a mindfulness lesson in “Babar’s Yoga for Elephants,” and more. And when the colonialism of Babar’s early days became increasingly out of step with the modern world, de Brunhoff responded by taking the racist “Babar’s Picnic” out of print entirely and revising another title to remove several racist scenes.
Though de Brunhoff wrote many “Babar” books, he didn’t focus exclusively on the elephant. He also wrote several books about Serafina the giraffe, as well as such standalone books as “Bonhomme and the Huge Beast” and “The One Pig with Horns.”
Notable quote
“At first I wanted to be the most faithful possible to the style of my father, otherwise I think it wouldn't mean anything to continue the stories. But of course I'm not exactly the same man. I have my own feelings, and a little bit different as my father, who was maybe a little more simple -- benign you said, and naive in a positive way, you know. I am maybe less… tranquil as he was.” —from a 1981 interview with Studs Terkel
Tributes to Laurent de Brunhoff
Full obituary: The New York Times
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