The son of a Gypsy woman, Sébastien is found as a newborn baby in the Alps and brought up by Guillaume and his grandchildren Angélina and Jean. Born on the same day, Belle is a beautiful white Pyrenean Mountain Dog who has been neglected and passed on from owner to owner, until one day she escapes from a kennel. When Sébastien rescues the runaway Belle from the wrath of the villagers, the boy and the dog form a lifelong friendship and embark on exciting adventures in the mountains. First published in 1965 to coincide with the internationally successful television series of the same name, Belle and Sébastien is a heart-warming story of camaraderie, adventure and freedom.
Author
Cécile Aubry was a French film actress, author, television screenwriter and director. Born Anne-José Madeleine Henriette Bénard, Aubry began her career as a dancer. At age 20, she was signed to 20th Century Fox. She made her break as the star of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Manon (1949), which won the Golden Lion at the famed Venice Film Festival. That brought her a leading role alongside Tyrone Power and Orson Welles in American director Henry Hathaway's feature The Black Rose (1950). She had a strong performance in Christian-Jacque's Bluebeard (1952), one of the first French-produced films to be made in color. For a short time, she was a Hollywood success, signing a lucrative contract with Fox, employing her parents as a publicity team, and regularly appearing in French film magazines as an example of the perfect hybrid of Franco-American femininity. Her film career was short. It was interrupted by a secret six-year marriage to Si Brahim El Glaoui, the eldest son of the pasha of Marrakesh. She announced her retirement from film in 1959, claiming that she had only enjoyed cinema for its travel opportunities. She went on to write children's books and scenarios for children's television with considerable success. She is known in France for her TV series for children, Poly, about a boy and a horse, and Belle et Sébastien, adapted for television from her books. The main character in both series was played by her son, Mehdi El Glaoui (credited as "Mehdi"). On 19 July 2010, she died from lung cancer in Dourdan (Essonne), France, aged 81.
