Authors Illustrators Born in August: Laurent de Brunhoff • August 30th

Jean de Brunhoff, the creator of Babar, died in 1937 of tuberculosis.

The following year, his brother, Michel de Brunhoff, who was the editor of Paris Vogue, took charge of getting “Babar and His Children” published in book form. This story had been published two years before in black and white in an English newspaper. Michel asked Jean’s son, Laurent, who was a teenager at the time, to assist with the coloring of the illustrations.

From then on, Laurent took over the Babar legacy and has produced 45 Babar books to date.