Babar's Christmas Tree

Babar

by Laurent de Brunhoff

Small 4 inch by 4 1/2 inch picture book featuring Babar the Elephant.

Hardcover

First published October 12, 1974

About the author

Laurent de Brunhoff est un auteur et illustrateur français.

Laurent De Brunhoff has kept the spirit of Babar and his family alive for over 50 years. Babar was created by Laurent's mother as a bedtime story, and was first illustrated by Laurent's father, Jean de Brunhoff.

After his father's death, Laurent continued to create over 30 Babar stories.

Laurent de Brunhoff lived in Connecticut with his wife, writer Phyllis Rose.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was soon going to be Christmas. Babar went with Zephir the monkey to choose a tree.

With this straightforward opening the story of how Babar and friends acquire, install and decorate the seasonal tree is a simple reminder of one of the annual rituals many families around the world still regularly follow.

Selecting the largest specimen may at first have been a mistake, however, presenting difficulties with transport (a bus has to be commandeered), bringing it into the house (it’s too large to fit in the door), and standing it up (it’s too tall) but solutions are bound to be found.

And then there’s the matter of last year’s broken ornaments. Will everything eventually be made ready for the big day?

First of all I have to confess to feeling uncomfortable about the Babar books, even from an early age. There have long been charges of sexism, colonialism, racism and even of capitalism laid against the series, especially the initial entries written by Jean De Brunhoff in the 1930s when such attitudes were particularly rife. Following the war and after his father’s death Laurent went some way towards mitigating these, even declining to republish an especially offensive title, but it’s hard not to question what the subtext in some of the less recent offerings might represent.

Luckily, Babar and the Christmas Tree is not only inoffensive but even rather uplifting. Even as a child I never quite understood the appeal of the De Brunhoff anthropomorphic pachyderms but I recognise Laurent’s understated artistic skills designing simple panels that can be easily recognised and interpreted by young eyes. A bus with Zephir sitting on the end of the protruding tree waving a red flag followed by an excited little terrier I find charming, and the efforts of four elephants to hoist the heavy conifer through an open window is cleverly composed.

Apart from Zephir fans will recognise several of the elephant inhabitants of Célesteville, Babar of course but also the fantastically-named Hatchibombotar, the aged Cornelius, Babar’s wife Céleste and the youngsters Arthur, Pom, Flora and Alexander, all in clothes which reflect French postwar fashions. There are lots of illustrative little details, easy to miss but quietly delightful – the wrinkles on Cornelius’s trunk, the pompom on Arthur’s sailor cap peeping above the adult heads, a shocking glimpse of Flora’s frilly knickers as she steadies the tree.

Laurent De Brunhoff, who died early in 2024 in Connecticut aged 98, was told the first version of Babar’s origins by his mother Cécile, and though she called the elephant Bébé it was his father who suggested the name Babar, which happens to be Turkish for ‘lion’.

Though the unpleasant aspects that characterise the early titles have since been sanitised (to the extent that subsequent instalment can seem rather bland, even boringly bourgeois) the comforting resolutions of family adventures and sense of wholesomeness amay be precisely what are needed for young readers, and perhaps – like this picture book – especially ideal for the festive season.

[Rayjan Koehler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute little Christmas book for children.