Belle et Sébastien

Belle et Sébastien is a 1966 novel by Cécile Aubry about a six-year-old boy named Sébastien and his dog Belle, a Great Pyrenees, who live in a village in the French Alps close to the Italian border. Sébastien lives with his adopted grandfather, sister, and brother, as his mother, a Romani, died after giving birth to him while trying to cross the border on Saint Sebastian's day. The novel, known in English-speaking countries as Belle and Sebastian, is based on a 1965 French live action television series. The novel itself spawned a Japanese anime adaptation in 1981, a French motion picture in 2013, followed by two sequels in 2015 and 2017 (Belle and Sebastian: Friends for Life), and a French-Canadian co-produced TV series in 2017.