One can tell Christmas is getting closer. And here is quite an original gift for children. Dolly Bibble is a book, a CD, a musical tale, and it is the Bible sung and explained in French to children. No less than 3 former Eurovision contestants are involved in the project. They are Hugues Aufray, Natasha St-Pier and Amaury Vassili.
Dolly Bibble was meant to be a musical based on the Bible. The project was initiated by two major French songwriters very closely linked to the Eurovision Song Contest: Pierre Delanoë – who penned the 1958 French winning entry Dors, mon amour for André Claveau (see here), but also Allons, allons les enfants performed by Colette Deréal for Monaco in 1961 (see here), À force de prier sung by the Greek diva Nana Mouskouri for Luxembourg in 1963 (see here), the 1967 French entry Il doit faire beau là-bas for Noëlle Cordier (see here), the 1973 entry for Switzerland Je vais me marier, Marie sung by Patrick Juvet (see here) and Et bonjour à toi l’artiste, the 1975 French entry by Nicole Rieu (see here) – and Claude Morgan who composed the 1973 Eurovision winning entry Tu te reconnaîtras performed by Anne-Marie David for Luxembourg (see here).
The project was abandoned due to the death of Pierre Delanoë in 2006 but was given a second chance. Instead of a musical, Dolly Bibble is now a musical tale: a book consisting of 104 pages full of original drawings and a CD containing 12 original songs based on the stories of the Bible and performed by very well known French speaking artists.
The story is about a little girl, Dolly, and her rabbit friend Flip. Both start reading the Bible in her room. The main characters of the Bible will one by one appear to tell them about the Bible and their quest for the ‘key of life’. Three of the songs are performed by former Eurovision entrant Hugues Aufray who represented Luxembourg in 1964 (see here), Natasha St-Pier who entered for France in 2001 (see here) and Amaury Vassili the 2011 French representative (see here). The three singers impersonate major characters of the Bible: Noah, Eve and Moses respectively. The illustrators of the book also took their inspiration from the singers to draw their respective characters.
The project is not meant to be a religious product but rather an original way to convey positive messages out of a fantastic story. The introduction of the book was even co-written by high representatives of the three monotheist religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, in France.
