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Babar at Home

Here, Jean de Brunhoff lets it rip. Basically everyone loses his/her mind.

Babar has triplets--and someone decides it's a good idea to leave little Flora in her crib with a tiny rattle. Of course Flora ingests the rattle and nearly dies.

Alexander, another of the triplets, is riding in a perambulator. His maid senses she has lost an item--a shawl?--and, bizarrely, she entrusts Alexander to the care of airhead teenager Arthur. Arthur gets distracted by the shiny buttons on a nearby marching soldier, and Alexander falls off a cliff, only to be rescued by a group of chatty squirrels.

Finally, a baby--Pom?--wanders off from a family picnic, floats in the sea in his uncle's bowler hat, and attracts the attention of a hungry crocodile. Babar impales the crocodile on an anchor, and the villain is left to thrash and thrash, and I think we're meant to conclude that he is slowly dying as the curtain falls.

Something tells me a children's story written today would be safer, more sanitized.

But the startling chaos of "Babar" seems truthful; it seems close to actual life, if you ask me.

I'm looking forward to "Babar and Father Christmas....."
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