Babar Celebrates 75th Birthday

Posted on April 22, 2006

Babar the elephant celebrated his 75th birthday with worldwide birthday events. France, the birthplace of Babar, also created a special stamp for the occasion. The Babar books were started by Jean de Brunhoff and continued by his son Laurent de Brunhoff. Laurent is skilled at illustrating like his father.

He told Canoe, "I wanted to be a painter . . . but I wanted Babar to stay in the family. "He was my friend and I wanted him to live again. I started to make drawings in the same style. I enjoyed it very much and everybody was happy to see Babar again. "

It was a great decision by de Burnhoff. He published 32 Babar books himself and there are now a total of 8 million Barbar books in print worldwide in a total of 17 languages. And de Burnhoff plans to keep writing them. Even after sixty years of writing Babar stories he still has more to share about the beloved elephant and Celesteville.

Update: And five years later Babar celebrates birthday number 80. He even helped with the NYSE closing bell.