She was one of the two mothers of Tom-Tom and Nanathe magazine's flagship comic strip I like to read, lending his pencil to Jacqueline Cohen's screenplays for more than three decades. Bernadette Després, designer and co-creator of the series, died on Wednesday November 19, at the age of 83. She leaves behind a wealth of work, which has left its mark on generations of young readers, reaching, over the years, issues and albums, a much wider readership than that of the Bayard editions magazine.
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We no longer present Tom-Tom and Nana, the two children causing the despair of their parents and the joy of the customers of La Bonne Fourchette, the family restaurant that they liven up with their arguments, their pranks and, more rarely, their blows. of genius. The life of Bernadette Després and, above all, her work prior to the series, however, remain largely unknown. Born in 1941 into a large Catholic family, Bernadette Després was an average student, saved by her passion for drawing, which she discovered as a teenager. Her parents, whom she had thanked all her life for their open-mindedness, let her enroll, after first grade, in a drawing class for young girls, rue Beethoven, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
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Four years later, she launched: “She lived on rue de Villersexel, not very far from rue Saint-André-des-Arts, where the offices of La Farandole editions were located, says Christophe Meunier, researcher in children's literature, one of his friends. She presented them with a project, they said yes straight away. » It doesn't matter that the publishing house is part of the communist galaxy. Annie goes shopping, published in 1965, tells the story of a young girl who, with bread change, enters a hairdressing salon and treats herself to a Brigitte Bardot haircut. “It was a trait very far from that of Tom-Tom and Nanabut we find the spirit of transgression, the desire to create a burlesque situation each time”notes Christophe Meunier.
School life tables
In the 1970s and 1980s, three illustration albums without text appeared on the world of school, published by Bayard-Centurion. On large double pages are presented pictures of school life at the time, a sort of silent reports on the children's day: My little school, in 1976, My school party, in 1985, and Pinou the rabbit from my school, in 1986. To create them, Bernadette Després moved into her children's school, observed, captured and recorded the micro-events of the day: a burst of laughter, a runny nose, a pot of paint that spilled. , a fork which falls on the tiles of the canteen. “His drawing books are rich and abundant, each painting is very patiently constructed, nothing is left to chance. She has created hundreds, thousands of scenes in schools, shops, homes”indicates Christophe Meunier.
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