Reviews: (by author)

Brunhoff, Jean de. Translated from the French by Merle S. Haas. With an introduction by Kevin Henkes. Bonjour, Babar! The Six Unabridged Classics by the Creator of Babar . New York: Random House, 2000. ISBN 0-375-81060-9. $29.95.

With two of the six original Babar books out of print, and an ocean of spin-off commercial publications invading real and virtual bookshops, this is a very welcome edition and certainly worth the price (any individual book costs $15). However, as always with collected volumes, it is not very reader-friendly: heavy and hard to handle. Perhaps it will be more used by adults working with children than the children themselves.

Babar has the undisputable reputation of a world classic, even though a radical question was posed a few years ago by Herbert R. Kohl: "Should we burn Babar?" The books have been repeatedly accused of racism and sexism - rightly so, I think. Although I am far from suggesting that we should burn Babar - or any other book - I strongly recommend all teachers, librarians, parents and scholars to take a closer look at Babar, now that we have all the six original books collected together.

The story of Babar is the eternal story of nature versus civilization. Running away from the hunter who has killed his mother, Babar the little elephant comes to a big city where he acquires human habits, such as walking upright, wearing clothes, sleeping in a bed, learning to read and write, learning table manners, and so on. This is the development all young children in our society must inevitably go through, and this is without doubt one of the secrets behind the great appeal of the first Babar book. Babar and his elephantine spouse Celeste experience the humiliation of being treated as "savages" in captivity, stripped of their clothes and other human attributes. However, on returning to "the great forest" and being crowned king, Babar imposes his newly acquired lifestyle on his fellow elephants and other animals, for instance Zephyr the monkey. The pictures convey this process much more eloquently than the sparse words. Transformation scenes from walking on all fours to full anthropomorphism are repeated over and over again. The forest is ruthlessly devastated to give way to conform rows of huts and two monstrous monuments to civilization: Bureau of Industry and Amusement Hall. Interestingly enough, the picture of the elephants cutting down trees is minimized in this edition from a full double spread to a third of a page, perhaps not to attract too much attention. The hierarchy of the newly established society is rigid, its gender stereotypes appalling, and of course Babar is elected king exclusively on the ground of his superior position: he has a rich wardrobe of clothes, a car, money and influential friends in the civilized world. I am not sure I can subscribe to the values propagated in these books.

Am I then saying that Babar books are harmful and should not be given to today's children? Far from that. They are delightful in their combination of narrative simplicity and visual elaboration. I am only saying that as adult mediators we should be aware of the pitfalls hidden behind the label of "classics."

Reviewed by Maria Nikolajeva

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