As a child, I did not get to read any of the Babar books. I mostly read a bunch of Clifford and Dr. Seuss when I was younger so when I saw the original at the library a while back, I decided to give it a try. And I found that it's a pretty nice story. The book follows the life of Babar. From the t...
My kids got this book as a hand-me-down from someone (the inscription on the cover is "To Ben, Christmas 1974," but we don't have any Ben's in the immediate family), and lately my three-year-old has been requesting it almost every night. Frankly, as with many French things, I don't see the appeal. ...
Recently, my family rented a cabin for a week. Now, most cabins have a collection of books that the owners leave around, and it's usually along the lines of a swap shelf with a bunch of thrillers, romance novels, and the lesser known works of 70s scifi authors. This cabin was notable in the quality ...
I didn't enjoy this very much at all. It was tedious and rambling and random. I honestly couldn't wait to be done reading it. The first Babar book has some charm and novelty. With this second book in the series the novelty of a walking/talking/civilized elephant was completely gone. And now I d...
What a very odd story! On one hand this is a very silly story about an elephant who gains some sophistication in the big city returning to rule and civilize his old herd. I think that is all children see. But on the other hand there are some disturbing elements - death, violence and colonial atti...
This first book of the Babar series explains how Babar came to live in a town with people and how he comes to be who he is in all subsequent tales. This one never grows old especially now with the sad demise of the elephant herds.
Enjoyed this as a child.
Babar is pathetic to me, with his utopian dreams for elephants, based on European capitalism. Elephants, shake off your oppressor, and return to the matriarchal society that had been your lot. Apparently the bulls are meant to live away from the society so that they don't keep coming up with stupid...
A tale of a benign elephant family wise to the point of sadness, reconciled to the humiliations of long life but gifted with a naive delight in travel--in the pranks, say, of their foreign host and friend, a monkey. The infinite sadness of the elephants in their railway coach! They're arrayed in old...
I have more sympathy for Babar here, where he is shown lost and orphaned. To some extent I think most children feel like orphans being raised by people constantly making weird demands upon them in an order to civilize them. That said, it is disappointing that he doesn't use his adult size and streng...
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