Laurent de Brunhoff, author of Babar children’s books, dies at 98 | Books | The Guardian

Babar author Laurent de Brunhoff, who revived his father's popular picture-book series about an elephant-king and presided over its rise to a global multimedia franchise, has died at the age of 98.

De Brunhoff, who was from Paris and moved to the US in the 1980s, died on Friday at his home in Key West, Florida, after being in hospice care for two weeks, according to his widow, Phyllis Rose.

Just 12 years old when his father, Jean de Brunhoff, died of tuberculosis, Laurent was an adult when he drew upon his own gifts as a painter and storyteller and released dozens of books about the elephant who reigns over Celesteville, among them Babar at the Circus and Babar's Yoga for Elephants. He preferred using fewer words than his father did, but his illustrations faithfully mimicked Jean's gentle, understated style.

"Together, father and son have woven a fictive world so seamless that it is nearly impossible to detect where one stopped and the other started," author Ann S Haskell wrote in the New York Times in 1981.