LE ROI BABAR

Paris: Editions du Jardin des Modes, 1933. First edition. Very good plus.. First printing of the third title in the BABAR series, featuring the first appearance of the elephant city Celesteville. 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 many 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 third book in the series follows the founding of Celesteville, named after Babar's wife, a city that would become the setting for many subsequent adventures of the elephant king and his friends. An attractive building block in the construction of Babar's world. 14.25'' x 10.25''. Original black cloth-backed color pictorial boards. Color pictorial endpapers of elephants against a blue background. Illustrated in color. 48 pages. Binding with light edgewear and rubbing, upper edge with a bit of foxing. Front pastedown with evidence of bookplate removal. Leaves with occasional faint finger soil. Colors bright.