I was browsing my home library the other night and came upon one of my favorite books: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I received the book as a gift 10 years ago for my 19th birthday. I had forgotten what a beautiful, whimsical and enchanting tale The Little Prince is, great for both adults and children.
The Little Prince lived alone on a tiny planet no larger than a house. He owned three volcanoes, two active and one extinct. He also owned a flower, unlike any flower in all the galaxy, of great beauty and inordinate pride. It was this pride that ruined the serenity of the Little Prince's world and started him on the interplanetary travels that brought him to Earth, where he learned, finally, from a fox, the secret of what is really important in life.
The fox tells the Prince:
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
You are left imagining the different planets the Prince visits and the different characters he encounters on each one. The translation by Katherine Woods is in such a lovely, and poetic prose. I really recommend it to everyone. It's a small book of 111 pages, so it shouldn't take long to read.
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