Laurent de Brunhoff, artist who made Babar the elephant-king famous, dead at 98

KEY WEST, Fla. — Laurent de Brunhoff, the French artist who revived his father’s popular picture book series about Babar, an elephant-king, died Friday. He was 98.

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According to his widow, Phyllis Rose, de Brunhoff, a Paris native who moved to the U.S. in the 1980s, died at his home in Key West, Florida, The New York Times reported. He had been in hospice care for two weeks, and the cause of death was complications of a stroke, Rose, his wife since 1990, told the newspaper.

The artist sent the elephant, created by his father, into a haunted castle, into outer space and to New York City, according to the newspaper.

He was 12 when his father, Jean de Brunhoff, died of tuberculosis, The Associated Press reported. Laurent, when he was 5, and his 4-year-old brother were having trouble sleeping one night when their mother told them a story about an orphaned baby elephant who flees the jungle and travels to Paris, according to the Times.

The boys told their father about the story the next day, and Jean de Brunhoff began drawing sketches of the elephant, whom he named Babar, the newspaper reported.

Jean de Brunhoff, who died in 1937 at the age of 37, had published seven illustrated picture books, beginning with “The Story of Babar” in 1931, according to the Times.

As an adult, Laurent du Brunhoff expanded his father’s legacy, releasing dozens of books about the elephant, the king of Celesteville, according to the The Associated Press.

His first book, “Babar’s Cousin: That Rascal Arthur,” was published in 1946, the Times reported. Laurent du Brunhoff would write and illustrate more than 45 books about the elephant, dressed in a fine green suit.

The books sold millions of copies worldwide and were later adapted for a television program and movies such as “Babar: The Movie” in 1989 and “Babar: King of the Elephants” in 1999, according to the AP.

Babar’s stories have been translated into 18 languages, the Times reported. His final book, “Babar’s Guide to Paris,” was published in 2017.

In 1987 de Brunhoff sold the rights to license Babar to Clifford Ross, a Canadian businessman, according to the Times.

“I never really think of children when I do my books,” du Brunhoff told The Wall Street Journal in 2017. “Babar was my friend and I invented stories with him, but not with kids in a corner of my mind. I write it for myself.”

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