The Little Prince lives alone on a small, strange planet, where he tends volcanoes, cares for a special rose, and watches sunsets. Meet this beloved character and learn about his adventures in four winsome board books-- I Am the Little Prince/Je Suis Le Petit Prince, A Day with the Little Prince, Friends of the Little Prince, and Counting with the Little Prince --inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's enduring tale of friendship.
People best know French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for his fairy tale The Little Prince (1943).
He flew for the first time at the age of 12 years in 1912 at the Ambérieu airfield and then determined to a pilot. Even after moving to a school in Switzerland and spending summer vacations at the château of the family at Saint-Maurice-de-Rémens in east, he kept that ambition. He repeatedly uses the house at Saint-Maurice.
Later, in Paris, he failed the entrance exams for the naval academy and instead enrolled at the prestigious l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1921, Saint-Exupéry, stationed in Strasbourg, began serving in the military. He learned and forever settled his career path as a pilot. After leaving the service in 1923, Saint-Exupéry worked in several professions but in 1926 went back and signed as a pilot for Aéropostale, a private airline that from Toulouse flew mail to Dakar, Senegal. In 1927, Saint-Exupéry accepted the position of airfield chief for Cape Juby in southern Morocco and began his first book, a memoir, called Southern Mail and published in 1929.
He then moved briefly to Buenos Aires to oversee the establishment of an Argentinean mail service, returned to Paris in 1931, and then published Night Flight, which won instant success and the prestigious Prix Femina. Always daring Saint-Exupéry tried from Paris in 1935 to break the speed record for flying to Saigon. Unfortunately, his plane crashed in the Libyan Desert, and he and his copilot trudged through the sand for three days to find help. In 1938, a second plane crash at that time, as he tried to fly between city of New York and Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, seriously injured him. The crash resulted in a long convalescence in New York.
He published Wind, Sand and Stars, next novel, in 1939. This great success won the grand prize for novel of the academy and the national book award in the United States. Saint-Exupéry flew reconnaissance missions at the beginning of the Second World War but went to New York to ask the United States for help when the Germans occupied his country. He drew on his wartime experiences to publish Flight to Arras and Letter to a Hostage in 1942.
Later in 1943, Saint-Exupéry rejoined his air squadron in northern Africa. From earlier plane crashes, Saint-Exupéry still suffered physically, and people forbade him to fly, but he insisted on a mission. From Borgo, Corsica, on 31 July 1944, he set to overfly occupied region. He never returned.
Wow! This is such a previous read! The language weaving so delicately yet firmly the absurdities of mortal life with that of the simple purity of a curious kind little prince! The entire time my mind was working on two levels- what my eyes were seeing and reading, the story, and what was hidden behind the words, the meaning, the essence that became invisible if I focused too much on the matters of consequences!! Loved it! A definite re-read!!
The simplicity and the complexity clashing and dancing. I loved the use of the language. My imagination flew with the descriptions and I felt really moved (*spoiler*) when the little prince had to go back to his planet by asking the snake to bite him.
One of my life principle (I read the little Prince in German): "man sieht nur mit dem Herzen gut!" free translation in English: you can only see good things with your heart.
I have been trying to focus on good things in other people ever since. Try not to judge others or force others to accept my opinions, try to first consider about other's people point of view (wear someone's shoes) before protesting / commenting.
Life can be better if we consider the thoughts of the little prince! I am not asking for legitimation of what he said, just a simple open-minded and tolerance about any different opinion.
actually the story was just simple but the philosophical application in every story that the prince was telling was full of common sense that sometimes people take for granted or they are missing it.