Toronto’s Nelvana Enterprises and The Clifford Ross Company have partnered with France’s Lunii to bring new stories of Babar, the king of the elephants, to its online audio platform, Luniistore.

The audio album of Babar Visits the Elephant Kingdoms consists of 12 x seven-minute original audio stories available for download on Lunii’s website. The stories will follow King Babar, his wife Celeste and their three children, Pom, Flora, and Alexander, as they embark on a trip around the world in their hot-air balloon to meet other elephants.

The album first launched in French in July 2021, and in English in February.

Luniistore allows users to create their own audio library by purchasing audio content and transferring it to their My Fabulous Storyteller, Lunii’s screen-free interactive audio player that can be accessed offline. The company currently has over two hundred albums of original and licensed kids audio stories in eight different languages.

Nelvana worked directly with Lunii to create the Babar content, marking their first partnership.

The original Babar brand was created by Jean de Brunhoff in 1931, who wrote seven books before his death. His son Laurent de Brunhoff continued the series of Babar books, the most recent Babar’s Guide to Paris was published in 2017. The Babar IP is owned by Nelvana and The Clifford Ross Company.

Babar’s screen legacy includes an animated television series produced by Nelvana Limited and the Clifford Ross Company in 1989 for 65 episodes and 13 episodes in 2000 and Babar and the Adventures of Badou, a CG-animated series that aired between 2010 and 2015, co-produced by Nelvana Studio and TeamTO, in association with The Clifford Ross Company.