Saturday 19 January 2019

Babar's Celesteville Games + Le Chateau de Babar by Laurent de Brunhoff (Children's, Picture books, 10E/10E)


 Book summaries 
Le Chateau de Babar (French version)
1998, Hachette, Hardback, Library copy
Can't find a summary online, maybe because it's old? It's a story about King Babar the Elephant and his family 

Babar's Celesteville Games
 August 2011, Abrams Books, Paperback, Library copy
Babar's children have all grown up. He and Celeste take them to the Celesteville Games. All the best animal athletes will be there to compete. Babar's daughter Flora falls in love with a young athlete, Corriander, from the country of Mirza. They decide to marry and all of Celesteville is invited.

Nayu's thoughts 
Recently I'm rereading books I enjoyed when I was younger, because I can, and Barbar is a favourite character I've loved since I was little. I will show them in a later post (I'm on a time limit with blogging today since I want to go get my groceries) but I have a toy of both Celeste and sort of a toy of Babar, he's a pyjama case. That's how much I love it. I've seen both the original TV series and the modern one. I love them both as they are different, yet all capture Barbar and Celeste's nature. I particularly love the children, especially Flora and Isabel. This made reading these two books great fun, in a nostalgic way because the magic of Babar hasn't faded - it was weird seeing Flora grown up! 

The tales were in keeping with those I've read/watched in the past, nice and sweet, positive tales about communities. I'm fairly sure the French one is in English: it's nice for me to read it in French because that's the original language of the stories, so there's no mistaking what Laurent wanted to convey. 

The only reason they don't make the perfect grade is because well, the Celesteville Games book ended oddly! I couldn't believe that they just put one sentence like that. It makes sense, but seemed abrupt, and wasn't what I wanted at all. It's not a bad ending, just not for me. I've seen online that some people aren't happy with the whole story: I actually enjoyed it, and felt it showed that being different is fine. Having seen both old and new Barbar films I think that helped make it feel like Babar to me.

Suggested read

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