BABAR’S MUSEUM OF ART

That venerable elephant returns in another classically plotless but curiously appealing outing, this time to the new art museum of Celesteville (modeled on the Musée d’Orsay). Babar and the gang spend the day gazing at the vast art collection he has amassed and now made available to all: works by the Old—and New—Masters that substitute elephants for the familiar human figures. In this, it bears a superficial resemblance to Anthony Browne’s Willy’s Pictures (2000), but where that work invited the audience into the paintings and encouraged individual reflection, this serves a more pedagogical end. Wise Celeste invites the children to respond to the art—“I like the dog!” Flora exclaims of an elephantized van Eyck—while pompous Cornelius attempts to expound upon symbolism and goes ignored. As a primer for both parents and children on how to manage a family visit to an art museum, it cheerily offers both good and bad examples to follow and avoid; as a deeper invitation to encounter art, it barely serves as an introduction. (Picture book. 4-8)