The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Book Summary Information
Author: Antoine de Saint-ExuperyTranslator: Katherine Woods
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Illustrated
Published: 1943-06
ISBN: 0152465030
Number of pages: 93
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World
Book Reviews of The Little Prince
Book Review: Why Why Why?
Summary: 5 Stars
Why is this called a Children's Book? I just gave it to one of my grandchildren on their 12th birthday. Some computer program may tally up the vocabulary, the grammar, the sentence length and say it is 9-12 year old reading level, but that IS NOT COMPREHENSION LEVEL! ! !
I had to think long and hard to decide this grandchild is mature enough to deal with this book now. I know many adults for whom it all just slides off and leaves them with only the question "what's the big deal about this book?"
Summary of The Little Prince
"In the exquisite imagery of this fairy tale, the poet-writer shares with children something of the mystic's vision and wisdom of life."--New York Public Library.Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry 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-Exup?ry 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-Exup?ry's drawings offer a handy rebuttal: they're fresh, funny, and like the book itself, rigorously truthful. --James Marcus
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