The Little Prince - Softcover

De Saint-Exupéry, Antoine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0547978847 ISBN 13: 9780547978840

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers, 2013

Synopsis

Available for the first time in an edition for young adults, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic story, The Little Prince, beloved by readers of all ages, comes to life in a format perfect for teen readers.

"I’m glad I was asked to be the ambassador for this book. I suspect you may find that something of the starry magic of this story stays with you, as it has with me." — Gregory Maguire

"A lovely story...which covers a poetic, yearning philosophy—not the sort of fable that can be tacked down neatly at its four corners but rather reflections on what are real matters of consequence." — New York Times Book Review

At first glance, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1943 classic The Little Prince—with its winsome illustrations of a boy prince and his tiny planet—appears to be a children’s fairy tale. It doesn’t take long, however, to discover that it speaks to readers of all ages. This pocket-sized edition, perfect for teens, features Saint-Exupéry’s original full-color illustrations and the unabridged text, a reader’s guide, and a introduction by Gregory Maguire. Rediscover—or share—the magic!

This title has been selected as a Common Core Text Exemplar (Grades 4-5, Stories).

About this title

Review

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

Book Description

First published in 1943
Previous hardcover edition 2000
0-15-202398-4

About this edition

• Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0547978847
• ISBN 13: 9780547978840
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112