An abstract painter and illustrator of stories of Babar the Elephant, Laurent de Brunhoff is the son of Cecile de Brunhoff, a French writer and artist who told her young sons elephant stories to amuse them when they were young. The boys, Laurent and his brother, Mathjieu, persuaded their mother to publish the stories and their father to illustrate them, and the first of the stories was released in 1931. From that time Laurent de Brunhoff has carried on the tradition, writing and illustrating thirty more of the tales.

De Brunhoff lived most of his life in Paris, but in 1985, he and his family, including his mother, Cecile, moved to Connecticut. One of his favorite pastimes is hiking in the American ...