Babar Spoofs The Masters

Above:  a "reworking" of Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - 1884

Laurent de Brunhoff  (1900-1937) , the son of Babar's creator, Jean de Brunhoff, picked up where his father left off, continuing to create new storybook adventures for Babar and his friends. Although Jean de Brunhoff created Babar with his art, it was the imagination of his wife, Cecile, from which Babar originated. She originally invented Babar as a character in bedtime stories which she told to her sons. Meet the family that gave us Babar

The watercolors depicted here are a few of several illustrations in a book called Babar's Museum of Art.The original works were also part of an exhibition geared toward children which toured U.S. museums and galleries in the summer of 2009.

 Shown in the exhibition are illustrations created for the children’s book Babar’s Museum of Art. “The book tells the story of how Babar the Elephant and his wife Celeste transform an old train station into an art museum,” says Tomio. “In the book, de Brunhoff pays tribute to artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Paul Cezanne, and Picasso by adorning the museum’s walls with classic works of art with a clever twist – the characters depicted in those works of art are all elephants.”

 

That must have been some job to cut the ear of an elephant version of Van Gogh. ;-)

de Brunhoff's version of The Dream by Henri Rousseau

Well Dressed Animals

The Art of Beatrix Potter

Tom Kitten was very fat, and he had grown; several buttons burst off. His mother sewed them on again

The Rabbits Christmas Party

This book is a series of six paintings, containing only a few words and no other text. The paintings depict a traditional English Christmas, rabbit style. Two of the six paintings are represented here.

note: I have a particular fondness for rabbits. Though I have never eaten rabbit pie, my mother makes the most delicious Portuguese rabbit stew that you will ever taste.

This is another s

.

...and we will have something so very nice. I am baking it in a pie-dish--a pie-dish with a pink rim. You never tasted anything so good! And you shall eat it all! From The Pie and the Patty-Pan

note: this little story is about an invitation to tea (above) by a cat named Ribby, where the recipient, a dog named Duchess, becomes worried that lunch will be made of mouse. She panics because she doesn't like mouse one bit. So she concocts a plan...read more


"Now, my dears," said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, "you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor." read more

Jemima Puddle Duck

SHE set off on a fine spring
afternoon along the cart-
road that leads over the hill.

She was wearing a shawl
and a poke bonnet.

u

"Thank goodness, my education was neglected," Potter later wrote in an article, but actually she was much interested in science and spent much time in developing a theory of the germination of fungus spores...read more

Words

As I was reading aloud the story Millions of Cats earlier today to one of my young students, we came upon a passage in the picture book with the word "homeley" in the text. The child asked me what that word meant. When I explained that it meant the same as the word "ugly", nothing in his facial expression appeared to register the meaning of the word. So I asked him if he knew what ugly meant. He said no. I didn't define it but continued to read aloud to him.

How wonderful, huh, to not know what that means?