A Review of 'Le Petit Prince/The Little Prince' by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The Little Prince, published in 1943, is French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's most famous novella. Saint-Exupéry wrote it while living in the United States. It has been translated into more than 180 languages and sold more than 80 million copies making it one of the best selling books ever. An earlier memoir by the author recounts his aviation experiences in the Saharan desert. He is thought to have drawn on these same experiences for use as plot elements in The Little Prince."

I read this for my college French class (except, since it was the end of school, I looked up the ENGLISH VERSION and read it that way because I was way too lazy to go through and translate everything... Senioritis, word).

Normally, I don't review children's books, but this one is kind of a book for children and "pour les grandes personnes."  The pictures are simplistic (you'll find out why right away) and the concepts are easy enough for a child to understand, but there are also concepts for adults to understand that are, at times, challenging to face.  

What's really neat about this book is that the Little Prince (le Petit Prince) goes on all sorts of intergalactic adventures.  His home planet is not earth.  It is an asteroid!  And so are many of the other places that he visits whilst planet hopping.  He visits a king that rules over space, but makes perfectly reasonable orders for his subjects.  He meets a business man, a geographer, and a drunkard, among other things.  

With each person he visits, he learns something else about life and the psyche of an adult.  In a way, as the Little Prince is going through his adventures, children will learn a little bit about the world and adults readers will learn a thing or two about themselves.  The Little Prince is very much a child in the beginning of the story as he tells of his routine every day, sweeping out his volcanoes and taking care of the rose who was his friend.  By the end of the story, he is still a child, but a more enlightened one, in a way.

Overall, this is an adorable and very insightful book.  I give "Le Petit Prince/The Little Prince":

Thanks for reading!

--Jude  

P.S. There is another review about intergalactic adventures coming soon.  Keep your eyes peeled!