First French-language edition (published during WWII in the US) of Jean de Brunhoff's final Babar title, in which Babar makes the long trip to enlist Father Christmas's help.
Very good in very good dust jacket.
Price: $1,800.00
The BABAR series has delighted generations of young children around the world. The de Brunhoffs' simple and stylish art is widely praised for being "comprehensible and entertaining even if one didn't know the language" (Bader, 547). The BABAR books set the tempo for all picture books that followed: their "large format, fine litho-printing and hand-written text" fueled the "visual triumph" (Whalley and Chester, 189) of the picture book in the 1930s.
This New York-printed French edition of BABAR ET LE PÈRE NOËL was published simultaneously with the edition printed in France; it followed the US English language edition only by a year. This was Jean de Brunhoff's final BABAR title before his death – the series was continued by his son Laurent starting in 1948. A lovely copy, unusual to find in the original jacket.
Read more: Barbara Bader, American Picturebooks; Joyce Irene Whalley and Tessa Rose Chester, A History of Children's Book Illustration.
New York: Random House, (1941). 14.25'' x 9.75''. Original blue cloth-backed color pictorial boards. Original unclipped ($3.00) color pictorial dust jacket. Color pictorial endpapers of elephants against a red background. Illustrated in color. [40] pages. Jacket with some wear, chipping to spine ends and lower rear; small spot of soil to rear. Binding with a hint of edgewear, tiny spot of soil to rear. Two leaves with long closed tears carefully mended. Bright and solid.
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