Babar Comes to Houghton Library

Houghton hosts an exhibit of the green suit-wearing French elephant through August 31. 

For the exhibit, the library commissioned an original watercolor from Laurent de Brunhoff, showing Babar on the steps of Houghton with ABC de Babar under his arm.
Image courtesy of Houghton Library

Published in 1935, ABC de Babar—the focus of a current exhibit at Harvard—was the fourth book in French illustrator Jean de Brunhoff’s series about a little elephant in a green three-piece suit. The children’s books (the first appeared in 1931) had grown out of a bedtime story that de Brunhoff’s wife invented for their two oldest sons when they four and five, about an orphaned elephant on a shopping spree in Paris. Years later, one of those children, Laurent de Brunhoff, kept Babar’s story going long after his father died in 1937, adding dozens of titles to the Babar bibliography.

Now 90 and living in Key West, Florida, Laurent and his wife, Phyllis Rose ’64, Ph.D. ’70, a professor emerita at Wesleyan University, recently donated archival work of his father’s to Harvard, and an exhibition displaying some of those materials is on display at Houghton Library through August 31. It is not the first time Babar has come to Harvard: in the 1965 book Babar Comes to America, the elephant pays a visit to Cambridge, where he chats with students, receives an honorary doctorate, and hangs out in the Harvard Lampoon building.

The sketches, ink drawings, hand-colored proofs, and cover designs document the entire production process for ABC de Babar. Viewers can see the illustrator experimenting with typefaces and titles (an early sketch for the cover called the book Apprenez vos lettres comme Babar), exploring different compositions and ways to combine letters and pictures. Unlike the first three books in the series, which tell the story of how Babar was orphaned by a hunter and brought to a city before returning to the jungle, ABC de Babar doesn’t have a narrative—it’s a guide to the alphabet on which each spread is a scavenger hunt for items whose names begin with a particular letter: for instance, tables, tea, terraces, trains, trolley, tulips, tunnels, the Eiffel Tower. 

The exhibit largely skirts the politics of the Babar series, which in recent years has drawn criticism for what some see as a tacitly pro-colonialist stance. In the original story, Babar absorbs the virtues of Western civilization during his time in the city, which allows him to preside over a newly enlightened elephant society after he returns home and is crowned king of the elephants.

Besides Jean de Brunhoff’s production materials, the exhibit also includes, off to the side, a watercolor, painted this year by Laurent de Brunhoff, of the green-suited elephant on the Houghton’s steps, with a crown on his head and a black portfolio under his arm. It shows, the caption says, Babar himself delivering his ABC to the library. 

Read more articles by Lydialyle Gibson

You might also like

What of the Humble Pencil?

Review: At the Harvard Art Museums’ new exhibit, drawing takes center stage

‘Passengers’ at A.R.T. Blends Acrobatics with Einstein’s Relativity

Review: Quantum mechanics meets circus arts at the American Repertory Theater’s performance

A Harvard Art Museums Painting Gets a Bath

Water and sunlight help restore a modern American classic.

Most popular

Is the Constitution Broken?

Harvard legal scholars debate the state of our founding national document.

Paolo Pasco and the art of making crosswords

Paolo Pasco and the art of making crosswords

Harvard Research Funding Will Resume, Government Signals

Notices of grant reinstatements follow a court ruling, but the Trump administration could still appeal. 

Explore More From Current Issue

Man splashing water on his face at outdoor fountain beside woman holding cup near stone building.

Why Heat Waves Make You Miserable

Scientists are studying how much heat and humidity the human body can take.

James Muller in white lab coat leaning on railing in hospital hallway.

Free Speech, the Bomb—and Donald Trump

A Harvard cardiologist on the unlikely alliances that shaped a global movement to prevent nuclear war

Catherine Zipf smiling, wearing striped shirt and dark sweater outdoors.

Preserving the History of Jim Crow Era Safe Havens

Architectural historian Catherine Zipf is building a database of Green Book sites.