This 1940s classic by a French writer/aviator has been popular for decades both as a great book to read to children but also as an easy book to translate for French students. The story is about a boy who lives alone on a planet that is about the size of a house. He has a simple life, with a rose and some easy to maintain volcanoes for company. Eventually, he decides to leave his planet to explore other ones near him. Many of these planets are just as small as his, each with a grownup living on it who seems just silly (to the prince and the reader). Finally, the prince ends up on Earth (so large!!), and he makes friends with several creatures and the narrator of the story who is an aviator. The narrator has the grownup tendencies in him squashed by the simple child-like thinking of the prince. The book focuses on get people to think more like children usually do, and the narrator does a good job of showing how much simpler and easier it is to think like a kid.
"They [grownups] always need explanations."
"Grownups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again." (both from page 2)
I especially like that second one because it seems like it would be true. We always ask kids to explain themselves, especially when they say something that we don't understand or that we think is rediculous. They just except that there are weird things. They ask qustions, but only when they have nothing to tie the idea down, to visulaize and understand something. Adults, however, want explanations for everything; we're never fully satisfied with what someone says about something.
"What's most important is invisible." (page 68)
This is said several times in the book, but I quoted it from the scene I like it from the most. Here, the pilot is carrying the sleeping prince, and looking down at him, thinking about how he'll miss the kid when he leaves for home. The pilot realizes that the body he is looking at is just a shell for the prince, his personality, his mind, his animation, everything about the prince that he loves. Whether or not you believe in a seperate soul or not doesn't matter. There is life that is housed in the body and that is what makes a person who they are. When we die, we leave the body here. What happens to that animation? No one really knows, but it goes somewhere.
The last thing about this amazing book I would like to talk about is the dedication:
"To Leon Werth when he was a little boy."
I like this because it is yet another way to remind us to try and remember that child that we once were and that we will always carry with. I believe that we can never get rid of that; we can just bury deep within us.
This was an awsome book. It is supposed to be for children, but many adults read this book too, and they should if they haven't.
*Note: I will be keeping up with my reading this weekend, but I will be busy the next few days, so my posts might be late.
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