Crocs on “customized” feet, very colorful sweater, mischievous smile, Bernadette Després, seated quietly on her chair, put on a show this Thursday at the Pop Women Festival, which is being held in Reims from March 7 to Saturday, March 9.
His playfulness is contagious.
The designer of Tom-Tom and Nana, who lives in Givraines in Loiret, is in high demand.
Long invisible, crushed under the growing success of Tom-Tom and Nana, the octogenarian accepts that the characters have taken precedence over her career as a cartoonist.
Imagined as "an extension of his childhood", the characters of Tom-Tom and Nana reflect the carefreeness and innocence characteristic of children, an enchanted parenthesis which partly explains the success of the stories of Tom-Tom and Nana.
“I never wanted to talk about the problems of the world.
What attracts me is children, it has to be alive, it has to move.
All of this remains in a very protected environment.”
A desire which ended up paying off, without however convincing Bernadette Després of the success which surrounds her albums which have sold more than 16 million copies.
“At the time, I had an absolute blast with Bayard, the monthly publications with the J'aime Lire collection allowed me to work.
Today, that would be almost impossible.
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Characters who span the ages
Praised in 2019 during the Angoulême Comics Festival which awarded her an honorary Fauve, this loving but “tough” grandmother who willingly lends her features to the “Tante Roberte” of her albums, does not forget yet not his beliefs.
Invited to Reims to the Pop Women Festival which advocates feminist values, she readily repeats that the parents of Tom-Tom and Nana, the Dubouchons, are a modern couple.
“In this couple, both mother and father work in the restaurant, they both take care of the children, which in the 1970s was rather pioneering.”
A departure from patriarchy appreciated but not claimed which still finds credit with current generations.
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During her meeting this Thursday in Reims with the designer Camille Jourdy, children's illustrator, Bernadette Després, who received the Legion of Honor at the start of 2021, attracted a full and fascinated audience.
Inside, children, but also the children's parents, who enjoy hearing the octogenarian's anecdotes.
The same people who rush to have the albums “that changed their lives” or allowed them to “go through childhood with lightness” signed.
The children of 2024 continue to bring this work which seems timeless to life through the albums they know and which they borrow primarily from the library, but also by watching the cartoon (broadcast since 2019 on the Télétoon + channel).
An eternal beginning again.