[3] The Babar books began as a bedtime story that Cécile de Brunhoff invented for their children, Mathieu and Laurent, when they were four and five years old, respectively.

The boys liked the story of the little elephant who left the jungle for a city resembling Paris so much that they asked their father, a painter, to illustrate it.

[5] Originally, it was planned that the book's title page would describe the story as told by Jean and Cécile de Brunhoff.

Michel de Brunhoff arranged for the black and white drawings to be painted in color, with the then-thirteen-year-old Laurent helping with the work.

[citation needed] Soon after the end of World War II, Laurent, who had become an artistic painter like his father and had also studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, began work on a Babar book of his own.