The Little Prince: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Fable for Children and Grown-Ups
First published in 1943 in the United States, because the Second World War prevented it from being printed in France, The Little Prince is written in a simple, direct style and has often been considered a children’s book. Yet its reflections on life, society and love make it a story for readers of every age. It has been translated into a great many languages and adapted into countless formats.
Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), with his own illustrations
Title: The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince, 1943)
Format: English paperback picturebook (Clarion Books), 96 pages, full-colour illustrations
Scope: Philosophical fable in the form of a children’s story
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0156012197 (ASIN 0156012197)
A Pilot, a Desert and a Sheep
At the beginning of the story, the narrator, a pilot, is stranded in the middle of the Sahara Desert. There he meets the Little Prince, who comes from a distant asteroid and asks him to draw a sheep, and who never lets go of a question once he has asked it.
A Journey Through the Universe
Little by little the narrator discovers the prince’s fascinating story. The boy set out on a journey through the universe, leaving his asteroid behind and visiting several places before reaching the Earth. Along the way he meets a varied group of eccentric characters who convince him of how strange the world of grown-ups is: so busy with serious and important matters that they forget to enjoy life.
The Rose and the Fox
The heart of the book is the prince’s love for a single, vain, beautiful rose he left behind on his planet, and the lesson he learns on Earth from a fox who asks to be tamed. Taming, the fox explains, means creating ties: once tamed, you become unique to each other. He leaves the prince with the book’s most famous line, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye", and with the reminder that we are responsible for what we have tamed.
A Pilot’s Book
Saint-Exupéry was a pioneering aviator as well as a writer, and in 1935 he and his navigator crashed in the Libyan desert and nearly died of thirst before being rescued, an experience he described in Wind, Sand and Stars and that clearly lies behind the narrator’s crash in the Sahara. He wrote The Little Prince in exile in the United States in 1942, and it was published in New York in 1943. The following year he disappeared on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean, so he never saw it published in liberated France.
Grown-ups and Their Numbers
Many of the book’s gentlest jokes are aimed at adults: the businessman counting stars he believes he owns, the geographer who never leaves his desk, the lamplighter who obeys orders that no longer make sense, and the narrator’s complaint that grown-ups care only about figures. They are part of why the book speaks to adults as much as to children, perhaps more.
Who Should Read It
Everyone, at least twice: once as a child and once as an adult. It is also a classic first book for learners of French, and in English it is short and simple enough for intermediate learners.
The King’s Lesson
One of the most memorable ideas in the book comes from the King, who tells the prince that one must ask of each person only what that person can give. It means that, to be obeyed, you must command what others are willing to do: a line about the importance of kindness and reason in the exercise of power.
This Clarion paperback reproduces Saint-Exupéry’s own watercolours in colour, which matter as much as the text. It is the kind of book to read once as a child and again, very differently, as an adult.
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