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7 timeless life lessons from The Little Prince

The Little Prince

Everyman's Children's Classics has more than 50 titles in print. It offers the finest editions currently available of the world's greatest children's books in handsome, full cloth hardcover bindings. 
 
The library brings back into print major illustrators such as Ivan Bilibin, Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham, Nicolas Bentley, Walter Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, Edward Ardizzone, W.Heath Robinson and Mervyn Peake.

Saint-Exupéry's legendary story, now out of copyright in the UK but not in the US, finally takes its rightful place in Everyman's Library Children's Classics.

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry was born on 29 June 1900 in Lyon, France. He first flew in a plane when he was twelve years old, an experience which ignited a life-long love of aviation and adventure. After serving in the French air force, Saint-Exupéry joined a pioneering aviation company and helped to establish the first airmail routes over north Africa and South America, surviving numerous accidents and gaining the Légion d’honneur for his service. His experiences inspired several books, including Night Flight (1931), and Wind, Sand and Stars (1939), which were awarded France’s highest literary awards. He wrote The Little Prince during a sojourn in the US, where it was first published in 1943, before he returned to France to fly military reconnaissance missions. On 31 July 1944, Saint-Exupéry took off from an air base in Corsica, but never returned. His disappearance remained the subject of speculation until 1998, when his identity bracelet was recovered from the sea off the coast of Marseille. 
 
Michael Morpurgo OBE is one of Britain’s best loved children’s authors. He was born in 1943 in St Albans and published his first book in 1975. Since then he has written over one hundred books, which have been translated into over twenty languages, and adapted for film and the stage, including the National Theatre’s hit production of War Horse. His books have won the Whitbread Award, the Smarties Book Prize, the Children’s Book Award and the Blue Peter Book Award as well as many others. Michael was Children’s Laureate from 2003-2005, and was awarded an OBE in 2006.

Written during World War II, The Little Prince tells of the friendship between the narrator, an aviator stranded in the Sahara desert, and a mysterious boy whom he encounters there. Ruler of a tiny asteroid of which he is the only inhabitant, the Little Prince chats disarmingly about his curious adventures in space and since arriving on earth; of his distant home and of his love for a beautiful and capricious rose, to whom he longs to return. A moving and deceptively simple tale, it was described by Saint-Exupéry as a children's story for adults, and it works on several levels as an allegory of his own life, or of the human condition. Children love it for its deadpan fantasy, for its sense of amused bafflement at the grown-up world and for the author's attractive watercolour illustrations which are an integral part of the book.

Robert Powell, Garrett Moore and Bernard Cribbins star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatization.

Robert Powell stars as the Aviator with Garrett Moore as the Little Prince and Bernard Cribbins as the King in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s popular fable. This poignant dramatisation of the French classic was translated and dramatised by Bonnie Greer. 
 
When he crashes in the Sahara Desert, the Aviator believes he is all alone – until he meets an unusual space traveller: a boy with golden hair who calls himself The Little Prince. As the Aviator repairs his plane, the Little Prince tells him fantastical tales about his amazing interplanetary journey. On his home planet, asteroid B-612, he fell in love with a beautiful rose, but left her to explore the universe. In the course of his travels, he has met people including a King, a drunkard and a lamplighter, as well as a snake and a wise fox – but now he must return home and be reunited with his rose... 
 
A classic story about love, friendship and loss, The Little Prince is one of the most read books in the world. The wonder and excitement of much-loved children’s classics lives on in BBC Radio’s acclaimed full-cast dramatisations, complete with evocative music and sound effects.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Michael Morpurgo

A new translation by Michael Morpurgo

A NEW TRANSLATION BY MICHAEL MORPURGO, AUTHOR OF WAR HORSE 
 
 If a little fellow comes along, if he laughs, if he has golden hair, and if he never answers questions, then you will know who he is. 
 
 He is the Little Prince, the mysterious, innocent and beautiful boy who appears to a pilot stranded in the desert and makes an extraordinary request. He has journeyed to our planet from his home among the stars, encountering all sorts of peculiar grown-ups along the way, and a fox who teaches him to see the important things in life. But the Prince has left behind a flower growing on his star, a rose which is his treasure and his burden, and before long he must return to it. 
 
 Master storyteller Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, has translated what is for him 'one of the greatest stories ever written' so that more English readers might discover the joy of reading this enchanting fable. The Little Prince is a story for everyone, for children and grown-up children, for kings, geographers and lamp-lighters, even for the very serious and the very wise. 
 
A beautiful hardback edition - the perfect present to enchant children and grown-up children this Christmas.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Books by Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Articles featuring Antoine De Saint-Exupery

7 timeless life lessons from The Little Prince

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