The Little Prince. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1943. 96pp.

A Book Review by Jose Raphael A. Villareal, Grade 11 – Service | March 08, 2019.

The little prince is a story that depicts the differences between an adult’s life to a young person’s life.
Most certainly the differences from each other’s imagination and their perspective of life. Making the book
definitely appealing to audiences of all ages. The author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born into a rich family in
France 29th of June, 1900. The story of the little prince was published 1942.
The first assumption readers get from the story of the Little Prince, is that it’s a children’s story. As right
as it seems, of course, there’s more than meets the eye, the story comprises more than symbolisms but real-life
occurrences as well.
The story of the little prince is about a pilot crashing in the desert somewhere in South Africa and meeting
a little prince from a planet far away from Earth. The pilot showed the little prince his drawing of an elephant
inside a boa constrictor and said how he didn’t like grownups because they disagreed and said that it looked
like a cowboy hat, he said they lack imagination, and so, the pilot left his artistic view on things. The little prince
felt the same because of his same experiences he had with adults on asteroids which was the king, the
lamplighter, and the geographer, on the way to Earth. The little prince talks about his special rose and also about
the fox that taught he also met on the way. But the way he thinks about his rose change when he discovers a
garden of rose, that made him think that his rose wasn’t special and one of a kind. The fox taught him all kinds
of things, the most memorable and important ones. Because of the fox’s teachings the little prince loves his
special rose more than before. At last the little prince realizes that he wanted to go home to see his rose, so he
accepts the snakes offer that he could make him go home in one bite. The pilot saw the little prince walking
weakly and dying, both of them eventually separated but they will surely remember each other.
The strengths of the story start with just two character just having a normal conversation, but as the
conversation goes, the more complex it gets/ The two character’s conversation is full with symbolisms that come
from their journey until the present, which makes the readers think as they read. The story makes the readers
imagine, there the story offers imagery sufficiently to the readers
The weakness of the story is that there was o background context of making the characters meet each
other, apart from their own description of each other. The story’s strength is also its’ greatest downfall, the
story has symbolisms that for other reads, might be too hard to comprehend.
To conclude all in all, the story of the Little Prince, is a magnificent work of art and literature by Antoine
de Saint Exupery. A story not just for children but for adults as well, because of its straight forward connection
to reality. The story is a full of symbolism that makes the readers think and imagine as they read, but the story
had some broad symbolisms that others might not get the metaphors and symbolisms in the story clearly or
correctly. The story teaches us about how every person has a story to tell and, in that context, that we should
not be afraid of meeting new people. In short, we have to leave our comfort zone because there is always
something new out there waiting to be discovered.
Overall, the story of the little Prince is very recommendable because of its wide reach for audiences of
al ages. It gives relevant life lessons to readers. People nowadays really need to read books and take their time
off with a book to read, the perfect book for that is the story of The Little Prince.