Babar The Elephant

This is Babar the Elephant and he belongs to Ann Tumser of California. This knitted Barbar was created in 1935 as a present for Ann and was based on drawings from a book by the French author and illustrator Jean de Brunoff.

Babar was created by Jean's wife Cecile in 1930 when Cecile came up with the first Babar story as she was settling her son Laurent and his younger brother down to sleep. The next day the two boys told their father about the story and he being a painter jotted it down and then started to create drawings to go with it. It was Jean who gave the elephant his name in a book he created of the bedtime stories just for his sons.  Soon friends of the children began to ask their parents for the book and Laurent's grandmother who was a publisher decided to publish her sons book in 1931. 

In the first book, Babar's mother is killed by a hunter and he wanders into the city.  He goes into a tailors and gets himself fitted for a suit. He is soon a big hit in top society. The story goes on to tell how he married his cousin, Celeste, and was crowned King of the Elephants. The book  became a success and was translated from French into several languages including English and Ann's parents bought her a copy. She fell in love with the Babar Stories and as each of Jeans six books was published her mother would buy them for her.

    

Ann sent me these photos to Elijah and told him that the first one was taken in 1937 when she was 3 years old. She says, "Obviously, Baba looked more like an elephant then. she went on to say: "The one I took of him this morning shows a well-worn, much repaired Baba.

I wonder if Ann has the oldest Babar in the world. If you know of an older one please send me a photo and the details so that I can show Ann and Elijah.

So what happened to the little boy whose mother told him the first story. Well he grew up and became a writer/illustrator. He now lives in America and has continued the family tradition by writing  books for children some about Babar.

I had a nice letter from the Babar Museum in which they said:

......The old photo clearly shows the old, original Babar as (likely) made by Random House. He was created in 1936 at the same time Jean de Brunhoff's first Babar book was published. And though I have no reason to doubt Miss Ann's story I truthfully didn't recognize the repaired Babar.  Many folks, as I've seen, have in fact made him new clothing and whatnot to replace those that were lost as well as made repairs on the body if damaged.  And in many of those cases, due to the loving repairs made, the elephant simply changed in appearence. In addition, prior to the first book being published, the Babar stories did run in several French and English newspapers of old and many folks fashioned their own Babar based on the illustrations. And there may have even been local shops who made Babar for sale (and though there is no record of them I have no doubt that they did exist prior to the first "officially manufactured" Babar being generally available). We are attaching a photo of our own "old Babar" for you to show little Elijah.  He is slightly different looking than the one in your own photo but there were different "models" made at the time.  

In the interest of saving time I'm sending pics of these guys since our one that most looks like yours is buried somewhere within the museum (which includes literally hundreds of stuffed Babar's) and I cannot find him at the moment.  However, Elijah is sure to enjoy these little guys!  :)

The Babar Museum  Use your back button to return to this site.

Meet Babar and his family   Use your back button to return to this site.

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