The illustrator Bernadette Després, who made young readers laugh thanks to her pencil strokes in the comic series “Tom-Tom and Nana”, died at the age of 83 on Tuesday, Bayard editions announced on Wednesday.
“It is with immense sadness that the Bayard Jeunesse teams learned today of the death of the illustrator Bernadette Després,” indicated the youth branch of Bayard in a press release, specifying that its teams will pay tribute to her during the Show book and youth press in Montreuil (F), at the end of November.
15 million albums of the adventures of “Tom-Tom and Nana” have been sold in more than forty years.
In 2019, Bernadette Després received the Honorary Fauve at the Angoulême festival. She was made a knight of the Legion of Honor in 2021. From 1997, the adventures of “Tom-Tom and Nana” were adapted into a cartoon on French television.
These characters with joyful adventures have “an unprecedented track record in children’s publishing”, recalled Bayard Jeunesse, including 34 volumes in edition, more than 3000 original plates published in the form of episodes in the monthly “J’aime lire” since 1977.
She put “in images always with humor texts relating to the daily life of children and the family”, underlined the publishing group.
Born in Paris in March 1941, Bernadette Després began her career as an illustrator for the Bayard Jeunesse newspapers and then worked for various publishers.
In 1976, Bayard Jeunesse asked Bernadette Després and Jacqueline Cohen to create a monthly comic strip: “À la bonne fork” would officially become “Tom-Tom et Nana” in 1990.
