Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2128 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Amazon.com
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first published The Little Prince in 1943, only a year before his Lockheed P-38 vanished over the Mediterranean during a reconnaissance mission. More than a half century later, this fable of love and loneliness has lost none of its power. The narrator is a downed pilot in the Sahara Desert, frantically trying to repair his wrecked plane. His efforts are interrupted one day by the apparition of a little, well, prince, who asks him to draw a sheep. "In the face of an overpowering mystery, you don't dare disobey," the narrator recalls. "Absurd as it seemed, a thousand miles from all inhabited regions and in danger of death, I took a scrap of paper and a pen out of my pocket." And so begins their dialogue, which stretches the narrator's imagination in all sorts of surprising, childlike directions.

The Little Prince describes his journey from planet to planet, each tiny world populated by a single adult. It's a wonderfully inventive sequence, which evokes not only the great fairy tales but also such monuments of postmodern whimsy as Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. And despite his tone of gentle bemusement, Saint-Exupéry pulls off some fine satiric touches, too. There's the king, for example, who commands the Little Prince to function as a one-man (or one-boy) judiciary:

I have good reason to believe that there is an old rat living somewhere on my planet. I hear him at night. You could judge that old rat. From time to time you will condemn him to death. That way his life will depend on your justice. But you'll pardon him each time for economy's sake. There's only one rat.

The author pokes similar fun at a businessman, a geographer, and a lamplighter, all of whom signify some futile aspect of adult existence. Yet his tale is ultimately a tender one--a heartfelt exposition of sadness and solitude, which never turns into Peter Pan-style treacle. Such delicacy of tone can present real headaches for a translator, and in her 1943 translation, Katherine Woods sometimes wandered off the mark, giving the text a slightly wooden or didactic accent. Happily, Richard Howard (who did a fine nip-and-tuck job on Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma in 1999) has streamlined and simplified to wonderful effect. The result is a new and improved version of an indestructible classic, which also restores the original artwork to full color. "Trying to be witty," we're told at one point, "leads to lying, more or less." But Saint-Exupéry's drawings offer a handy rebuttal: they're fresh, funny, and like the book itself, rigorously truthful. --James Marcus

From School Library Journal
YA-This new translation into "modern" English brings a classic tale into sharper focus for today's teens without sacrificing the beauty and simplicity of the author's writing, and the "restored" artwork has all the charm of the original drawings. What appears to be a simple tale of two lost souls-one, a pilot marooned in the desert next to his ditched plane; the other, a minuscule prince in self-imposed exile from an asteroid so small that he can watch the sunset 44 times a day-reveals itself as something far more complex. What appears to be a fairy tale for children opens like the petals of the Little Prince's flower into a fantasy that has lessons for all of us.
Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Alice Cary, Bookpage June 2000
"Here, Little Prince fans is the definitive edition. Happy Birthday, Saint Exupery."

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Customer Reviews

Door Opener
Written in 1943, this little book long ago attained the status of timeless classic. Yet, when discussed at our book club, our members could agree on little about the book's interpretation, sensibility, or even if it is appropriate for children. Some viewed it as an innovative form of literature requiring both a narrator and an inquisitor: What did that mean daddy? Where did the Little Prince go daddy? Does he love the rose? Who tamed whom? Some viewed it as a sort of religious work designed to teach our children "what is really important in life". Do you like butterflies? What sort of voice does she have? On the other hand, some felt that the book allowed children to question the wisdom of adults, especially parents. Is this one of those deals Like Text Messaging where kids get it but adults never can? Others, who knew something about the author's life---why should it matter--- read it as a sort of suicide note disguised as a children's book. It was during these darker moments that one wag commented that any work that can stimulate a discussion this gloomy had to be something really special. And, here's where we all started to agree. This is not a work that speaks for itself. It is, instead, a sort of catalyst that will produce different enlightenments for different readers and narrators. While Saint-Exupery's little book can open doors to wisdom, you have to enter by yourself. That so many continue to choose to do so is testimony to his greatness as a writer and a teacher.

[...]
I don't know how to begin to describe The Little Prince. In some ways it is like reviewing love itself. While many books have touched me emotionally, this short children's story has gone farther and deeper than any other. Everything about it is perfection: sweet, sad, flawed perfection. It is a tale of tears. It is about loving so much that you would embrace pain, even death, for the beloved, of loving sorrow because it comes from the beloved. It is about allowing yourself to be tamed even if it hurts.
Love is a goal in and of itself, a goal that the Little Prince learns to embrace at great cost to himself, but it is not the pure, perfect little one who I love most, nor the hardened but softening adult narrator. My true soul mate is the Fox who invites the Prince, pleads for the Prince, to tame him, to make him his own even though it brings tears and heartbreak. Oh! To love like that! That is the joy and sorrow of human existence, the gift of life. This book is perfection.

A good book for Adult.
It's a good story book for adults. I have had it at my home, and now I live alone and I would like to keep one closed to me when I think of it.