The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, translated by Richard Howard
Mariner
Fiction, CH Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Stranded in the desert, a pilot meets an extraordinary young boy, a self-styled prince hailing from a world little bigger than a house. Piecing together odd bits of their conversations, he reconstructs the child's unusual, meaning-filled journey through the solar system and around Earth.
REVIEW: I suppose I've been neglectful, not reading this story thirty-odd years ago as a child. (But, then, I didn't read Alice in Wonderland until adulthood, either.) In any event, I tried to rate it with the target audience in mind, though even then it nearly lost a half-star. The author seems to be trying too hard to be Simply Profound, forcing flat constructs to be mouthpieces for Insights and Lessons. The prince drifts through various adventures and encounters, several of which only feel half-started before the boy departs, while the pilot reawakens to the wonders of the world through his encounter. It has a certain charm and whimsy, and the prose (at least, the translated prose) has some nice turns of phrase, though I suspect it's best read in childhood... and left in the mists of nostalgia.
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