Word: babar
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...three propositions : 1) besides Humperdinck's heavy-handed Hansel and Gretel, there are precious few operas acceptable to children; 2) Scherman's Little Orchestra Society is always ready & willing to tackle a new score; and 3) the adventures of a young and appealingly unsophisticated elephant named Babar* are bread & butter to large numbers of children and ex-children. With Mrs. Berezowsky they worked out sketches, got Dorothy (Porgy) Heyward to try her hand at a libretto. The result, after nearly two years: the premiere last week at Manhattan's Hunter College of a children's opera...
...people wearing elephant heads -and the show was on. The story took the little elephant from his African jungle to the big city, into a school ("Good children in the front, bad children in the back"), into virtual slavery in a circus, and finally back into the jungle, where Babar married the princess, became king, and lived happily ever after...
...BABAR'S VISIT TO BIRD ISLAND (40 pp.) -Laurent de Brunhoff-Random House ($3.50). What happens when a royal family of elephants pays a social visit to the Bird King & Queen, told with engaging naturalness by a French author-artist who knows how to splash his pages with vivid panoramic views that have what every child loves in a picture-a brilliant general impression combined with endless small details to be picked out at leisure...
...style as clear as a summer day. But in 21 years of making children's records, he has amassed a Bingle-sized following among the hobbyhorse set, which also means Bingle-sized record sales. Some of his 950 Decca records, such as the original, out-of-print Babar* series (1936), have even become collector's items...
...what he would like in a picture. Friends have interpreted it as an allegory of the Spanish civil war: the straw general on horseback towering over the pacifist bull Ferdinand, war's destruction symbolized by the torn-out limbs of the rubber doll, monarchy lurking in the book Babar the King. Mark and Aaron both smile at this. They like the picture for the same reason others like it-because even when he chooses unpretty things to paint, Artist Bohrod's serio-comic detail tips the scale toward optimism...