Artist Behind Iconic Children's Book Character Babar the Elephant Dies at 98

Mar. 15, 2025

Laurent de Brunhoff with Babar the Elephant.Photo:Jeremy Bembaron/Sygma/Sygma via Getty

Jeremy Bembaron/Sygma/Sygma via Getty

Laurent de Brunhoff, the artist who brought beloved the children’s character Babar the elephant to life, has died. He was 98.

According to theNew York Times,de Brunhoff died on Friday at his home in Key West, Fla. due to complications from a stroke, his wife Phyllis Rose told the outlet.

Babar the elephant, who has appeared in dozens of children’s books dating back to the 1930s, has been a toy, a movie character in films likeBabar: The MovieandBabar: King of the Elephantsand more. But before all of that, the elephant was the brainchild of de Brunhoff’s father, Jean de Brunhoff.

“My mother started to tell us a story to distract us,” the artist toldNational Geographicin a 2014 interview. “We loved it, and the next day we ran to our father’s study, which was in the corner of the garden, to tell him about it. He was very amused and started to draw. And that was how the story of Babar was born.”

Laurent De Brunhoff.Dick Loek/Toronto Star via Getty

Dick Loek/Toronto Star via Getty

Jean fleshed out the character of Babar for the original 1931 picture book “Histoire de Babar” (or “The Story of Babar”). The elder de Brunhoff published six more books — each one of them featuring illustrated stories of the whimsical elephant making his best effort to fit in in Paris — before his death in 1937 from tuberculosis, according to theAssociated Press.

De Brunhoff’s first book featuring the elephant, “Babar’s Cousin: That Rascal Arthur,” hit shelves in 1946. By the time of his death, he had published over 40 more books featuring the character and turned Babar into a children’s book empire.

Laurent de Brunhoff.Yves Forestier/Sygma via Getty

Yves Forestier/Sygma via Getty

The picture book series hasn’t been without controversy, however — critics have argued that de Brunhoff’s books glorified French colonialism and featured caricatures of African people. Per AP, the Chilean author Ariel Dorfman wrote in the 1980s that the series were an “implicit history that justifies and rationalizes the motives behind an international situation in which some countries have everything and other countries almost nothing.”

In his 2014 interview, the author expressed his regrets for some of his earlier works and agreed with Dorfman’s assessment.

De Brunhoff signing authographs for Babar’s 70th birthday.Yves Forestier/Sygma via Getty

De Brunhoff married twice. He and his first wife Marie-Claude Bloch, had a son, Antoine de Brunhoff. He and his second wife Rose shared daughter, Anne de Brunhoff. Late in his career, he began to co-write the Babar books with Rose, an author and former professor of English. She toldNational Geographicthat the pair bounced ideas back and forth to bring later Babar stories to life.

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

“It works differently depending on the book and the inspiration,” she said in 2014. “Sometimes I’ll see that Laurent is interesting in drawing a particular thing, so I’ll encourage him to draw more of that thing. Then I’ll make up a story afterwards to tie these drawings together.”

The author often said that “Babar, c’est moi” (or “Babar, that’s me”). He told the magazine that he and the elephant are one in the same simply because they’ve spent their lives together.

“He’s been my whole life, for years and years, drawing the elephant. That’s why I say ‘Babar, c’est moi.'”

source: people.com