An eternal child with laughing eyes, she has been making the youngest laugh for nearly 50 years thanks to the turbulent Tom-Tom and Nana. The designer Bernadette Després, co-creator of the series with Jacqueline Cohen, died on Tuesday, November 19, at the age of 83.
She was one of the rare comic strip artists or scriptwriters to have been rewarded for all of her work with an honorary Fauve at the Angoulême festival in 2019.
“Bernadette Després has enchanted generations of children and given them a taste for reading”Minister of Culture Rachida Dati paid tribute to him on Wednesday on the social network X.
“I'm really lucky. It’s completely crazy”
Born in Paris in 1941, but living in Givraines in Loiret since 1974, Bernadette Després began working as an illustrator for Bayard Presse in the 1960s.
In 1977 she created the series Tom-Tom and Nanawhich was long called At the right forkwith Jacqueline Cohen, for the review I like to readlaunched that same year by the publishing house. Success quickly came.
“It’s completely crazy. I was really luckyshe told La New Republic in February 2024, on the occasion of an exhibition dedicated to him in Tours. I didn't worry, I worked at home, I was there for the children when they came home from school… I didn't worry. »
“My goal was above all to make the children laughshe added. For them to want to read these stories, we had to make them laugh and the writing should not be too copious. My daughter was 6 years old in 1977, and she loved it right away! »
Bernadette Després started drawing in middle school. She has a little trouble convincing her parents to make it her career. She finally integrated the School of Decorative Arts in Paris, from which she graduated as valedictorian.
She also drew Lulu for the magazine Astrapi, Nicole and Djamila, Lili Mustard or even Pinon the rabbit. But with 34 albums and nearly 17 million copies sold, Tom-Tom and Nana is his greatest success.
Scripted by Jacqueline Cohen then by Évelyne Reberg, the series, which was also adapted into a cartoon for television, recounts the mischievous mischief of a little boy and his sister, Tom-Tom and Nana Dubouchon, the children of a couple of restaurateurs.
A little neglected by their parents, too busy with their restaurant At the right forkthey multiply the stupidities, causing all kinds of catastrophes, for the greatest pleasure of the readers.
“Humor saves everything”
“One day, a child told me that with my stories, I took revenge on adults and that is very true. I don't like adults. They impress me with their seriousness”confided the designer in 2019 in an interview with the newspaper The Cross.
“Humor saves everything, it can save human relationships a lotshe also declared the same year to the AFP. When I see parents who are too strict with their children, they read Tom-Tom and Nanathat would do them good! »,
Despite the end of the adventures of Tom-Tom and Nana in 2012, Bernadette Després still appeared regularly at comic book festivals. She notably participated on several occasions in bd Boum in Blois.
Although a mother of four children and grandmother of eleven grandchildren, she also regularly worked in schools, with sick children in hospitals or victims of sexual abuse.
Bernadette Després received the Legion of Honor in 2021.
