Babar and George, bedtime's classics

The wise elephant and curious monkey have stood the test of time, remaining favorites of children's literature for decades. But are they still relevant?

By JEANNE MALMGREN
© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 24, 2001

Happy birthday, George!

Joyeux anniversaire, Babar!

Amazing how you two still get around, at your ages. How you hold your own on a bookshelf, even as the junior heavyweights crowd in -- the Pippi Longstockings, the Madelines, the Harry Potters.

Somehow, generation after generation, we never grow tired of the incorrigible monkey and the wise elephant king. Through decades of bedtime story sessions, parents introduce you to their youngsters. Then those youngsters grow up and introduce you to their kids. On pages stained with grape jelly and chocolate milk, you live on.

The crowded universe of children's literature is a jungle. Thousands of books don't live beyond the first printing. That means that characters like Curious George, around for 60 years, and Babar, around for 70, qualify as classics.

H.A. and Margret Rey, the husband-and-wife team that created George, are no longer alive. Nor is Babar's original author, Frenchman Jean De Brunhoff. His son, Laurent De Brunhoff, who continued writing and illustrating Babar books after his father died, now lives part time in Key West.

So the celebration falls mainly to George and Babar's publishers, Houghton Mifflin and Abrams. They're throwing parties, creating Web sites and releasing special anniversary compilations.

Amid the hoopla, though, are valid questions. Do the messages of these books, birthed before the Second World War, hold any relevance today? Are George and Babar useful role models for children of the 21st century?

Yes and no.

"From a literary point of view, I think they're good children's stories," said Kay Vandergrift, a Rutgers University professor of children's literature and author of several books, including Child and Story: The Literary Connection.

Though born in a simpler time, George and Babar still have a lot to say to us, according to Vandergrift, mainly because of their universality.

"The imaginative stories last longer because they are not locked into a moment in time or a particular place," she said.

Vandergrift has used the Curious George series for years, both in her literature classes and to read to young friends.

"It's every kid's story, this monkey trying to break the rules and see what he can get away with," she said. "Yet he always comes back to this stable, secure relationship with the man in the yellow hat. It's great for the kids' vicarious risk-taking."

Still, some critics have noted subtle racism in the Curious George books. The man in the yellow hat, George's captor-benefactor, has a starched, Great White Hunter look. Bad guys tend to be mustachioed, with slicked-back hair, vaguely Hispanic.

Then there's the matter of George's misadventures, and whether they lead young readers astray. The first page of every Curious George book says that George is a "good little monkey." Nevertheless he gets in trouble repeatedly by poking his nose where it shouldn't be: falling into a pot of cooked spaghetti, being pulled aloft by a handful of helium balloons, dialing emergency numbers on a telephone, letting loose an entire pen of pigs.

Always the man in the yellow hat comes to rescue George at the last minute.

Does this tell children that no matter how many times you get in trouble, someone's going to bail you out? Or is it simply encouraging them to be adventurous and try new things?

"Kids aren't literal-minded, as adults frequently are," said Vandergrift. "They easily move back and forth from fantasy to reality. And so this lets them vicariously test some of those dangers they don't need to carry out in real life."

Maybe so. Inevitably, though, Curious George has spawned Internet parodies, some of them X-rated. In one, the little monkey secretly follows the man in the yellow hat, to see where he goes each night after George is asleep. They end up at a gay bar. In another, the rogue monkey climbs a high-tension electrical wire and -- of course -- is burned to a crisp.

Babar, king of the elephants and husband to Queen Celeste, leads a much more domestic life. After losing his mother to a hunter in the first book and fleeing to a city where he becomes "civilized," he eventually returns to the forest, is crowned king and chooses his wife. Queen Celeste gives birth to triplets, Flora, Pom and Alexander.

Babar, a benevolent ruler, wants his kingdom to be a place of harmony. One night he dreams of winged elephants flying over Celesteville. They're named Patience, Courage, Happiness, Health, Love, Hope, Joy, Perseverance, Goodness.

Hardly the stuff of V-chips.

Even so, Babar has taken hits over the years.

"Some people see it as classist," said Ann Hildebrand, a Babar scholar and retired English professor from Kent State University in Ohio. "There's this subjugation of the jungle creatures, with the elephants being the strongest in the pecking order. But I've never been able to subscribe to that view."

Others accuse the Babar books of worse sins, saying that they glorify France's early 20th century colonial attitude.

First, a white hunter comes into the forest and shoots Babar's mother. Then the young elephant, orphaned, runs to the city, where he learns to wear clothes and drive cars and hangs about salons with the wealthy elite. When he returns to the jungle, he is immediately crowned king because he's assumed to be superior to the other elephants. Pretty soon, all the pachyderms are prancing around in fancy clothes.

"It's an absolute, step-by-step reflection of the way in which France developed their colonial empire. It was a sensibility that existed at the time," said Herbert Kohl of the University of San Francisco. Kohl wrote Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Children's Literature and the Power of Stories.

To condemn Babar for that reason is wrong, Kohl said. The books will not turn young readers into little imperialists any more than reading Harry Potter will turn them into pagans, as some people fear. Kohl -- who taught school for 40 years, wrote more than two dozen books on education and won, with his wife, the National Book Award for Children's Literature -- believes that balance is the key.

"For me, it's about choosing really good stuff that's powerful and interesting, that shows a variety of different ways of looking at the world. And then talking about it with the kids."

Kohl said he read Babar to his children when they were young. They plan to read it to their own children, too. It would be a shame, he said, not to let youngsters meet the elephant king.

"It's one of the most charming children's books ever written," he said. "I wouldn't want to deprive them of the magic and pleasure of enjoying the pictures and the words."

The important thing, Kohl said, is for children "not to be afraid of ideas of any sort, to filter things so they develop a honed judgment. For me, that's really the goal of this cornucopia of children's literature."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.