After writing to Santa, Arthur, Pom, Flora and Alexander carefully monitor the mailbox, but in vain. Finding their excellent idea of wanting to bring Santa home, Babar sets out on a long journey to find him and convince him to include elephant country on his gift giving tour.

Children's book authors Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff's most beloved elephant comes to the big screen in this animated family tale. Elephant monarch King Babar tells the tale, that unfolds via flashback, of how a much-younger Barbar and his girlfriend Celeste save her village from the pugnacious rhinoceroses that have come to raid it.

After his mother is killed by a hunter, Babar avoids capture by escaping to the city, where he is befriended by the kindly Old Lady. Later, with cousins Celeste and Arthur, he returns to the great forest to be crowned King of the Elephants.

Babar is a young elephant in the great forest. Whilst out with his mother a hunter kills his mother and he flees to escape the same fate. He eventually finds himself in a human city and experiences the many differences between city and forest life. Treated as an outsider he is taken in by an elderly woman, dressed in fancy suits, taught to write and count and is brought up in human culture.