Firstly let me acknowledge that this is, undeniably, a children's picture book. I'm not sure whether I ever defined an age range for the books here; if there were, it would now be 3-100+. Although marketed towards the very young reader, this book includes fascinating reflections on the meaning of time and growing older, and is worth reading at any age.
The story opens with our artistically challenged narrator, a pilot, stranded on a small island with only his recently crashed airplane for company. He calculates he has enough food and water for about eight days, and after beginning reparations of dubious usefulness, goes to sleep. He’s awakened by a diminutive prince, asking him to draw some sheep. We don't understand why sheep and not, for instance, an elephant inside a boa constrictor; all the tprince will tell our narrator is that he needs a sheep. Our pilot obligingly draws the sheep, and after a few tries, the right kind of sheep--not too old, or too hungry, or too young--is procured.
A curious mix of random and philosophical, juvenile only in its light writing style and young main character, Le Petit Prince conveys both a sense of passing time and motionlessness, exploring different aspects of time as they relate to humanity. Told in a childish manner that is easy to perceive as non-sequitur, the narration is refreshing and by turns bittersweet and comforting. It's a good book to read alone, ponder for a while, and then make your friends read--discussion of the story is basically inevitable.
Other things I like about this book:
- The illustrations are beautiful, and the background we get on our narrator-pilot's artistic history is charming.
- Although there are definitely messages to take from the prince's story, the author doesn't try to slip them in or be sneaky in his advice to children. (The advice is rather irrelevant, as you'll read, and quite amusing.)
- The narrative is primarily told from the pilot's point of view, but the prince's flashbacks are excellently handled. The voice is clearly different, and the transitions are fluent and eloquent.
Author's note: I read this book in French and English; it was an assignment for my French class, and I wanted to do a review instead of an essay. If you know a little French, it's fun to get the book in both languages and read them side-by-side. The author's French is refreshingly different from that of traditional textbooks, and it's fun to see the similarities between the languages.
A second note, also by the author: look forward to reviews of Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell; 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami; and The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. I'm hoping to do individual reviews as well as a comparison, as they're all told from multiple perspectives.
Happy reading!
M. Gabrielle
