NEW YORK (AP) — “Babar” author Laurent de Brunhoff, who revived his father’s popular picture book series about an elephant-king and presided over its rise to a global, multimedia franchise, has died. He was 98.
De Brunhoff, a Paris native who moved to the U.S. in the 1980s, died Friday at his home in Key West, Florida, after being in hospice care for two weeks, according to his widow, Phyllis Rose.
I’ll admit I loved those books as a kid. I was obsessed for a while with getting a pith helmet so I could go on adventures like Babar.
As an adult…well, the colonialist and racist overtones are no longer lost on me, and my son doesn’t own any of the books. But part of me misses my innocent wonder reading them.