If you ask a child what color an elephant is, the answer is gray.

But anyone who has asked over the past thirty years whether this applies to all elephants can be sure that the young interviewee will come up with an exception: Elmar.

Fridtjof Küchemann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Elmar, a picture book character by the English illustrator and author David McKee, has the appearance of a motley patchwork quilt: his skin is covered with colored squares.

The others, as the story goes in the first of the last 29 volumes in which David McKee tells about Elmar's life, don't really mind: "When Elmar was there, the elephants always had something to laugh about." Only Elmar asked himself, whether perhaps his colorfulness is the reason why his conspecifics laugh at him.

He finds a way to turn gray and surreptitiously blend back in with the others who are napping together so quietly and solemnly.

Until he finds it too funny, howls with laughter and frightens the others so much that even the clouds start to rain.

Elmar's gray berry juice is rinsed off, and everyone is so enthusiastic about the disguise that in future an Elmar Day will be celebrated among the elephants: everyone paints themselves brightly, only one turns gray.

How elephants are like that.

The story sounds a bit like the late 1960s, and "Elmar" was actually published for the first time in 1968, but it was only internationally successful after it was re-released in 1989 by the London publisher Andersen Press.

And how: The picture books were translated into sixty languages ​​and sold more than ten million copies.

The Thienemann Verlag published it in a German translation.

David McKee was born in 1935 in the southwest English county of Devon, studied at Plymouth Art College, from which he received an honorary doctorate in 2011, and initially worked for the satirical magazine "Punch", the "Reader's Digest" and a supplement of the London "Times".

He has received many awards as an illustrator and as a freelance artist.

He lived and worked in London and southern France.

His "Elmar" books are happy, friendly and harmless - that's quite a lot for a picture book, even a whole series.

With an eye and an open ear for the concerns of others, with optimism and commitment, every problem can be solved: This is how you could sum up their message.

Which, of course, is not trumpeted into the world at the loudest of elephants, but rather conveys itself quietly.

Once the other elephants complain to Elmar: The hippos have laid down in their river, but they have their own.

Unfortunately, the diplomatic mediator learns that it has dried up and the hippos don't know where to go.

Elmar finds out that debris has clogged the river further up the river and gets his herd to help the hippos clear the boulders.

After the joint work is done, we splash about, we part, not without inviting each other.

And looking back, it's a given for the elephants to have helped the hippos.

David McKee passed away surrounded by his family on Thursday after a short illness.

He was 87 years old.