Book Review: The Little Prince

For quite sometime now I have been at sea at writing my next post. What can I write about? I don't have bundles of wisdom to share or exotic travelogues to put across(lately). But when I glanced across my room, I saw the copy of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that I had just completed. Why not a book review then?

The Little Prince at first glance might seem like a children’s book. But as the saying goes never judge a book by its cover. The story is narrated by the unknown narrator who meets a prince in the Sahara desert where he had crashed his plane. The prince explains to him about his little planet with three volcanoes and his beloved rose. He leaves his planet to explore the nearby ones. The story then moves forward with the characters he meets upon each of the other tiny planets and finally on earth.

The book made me realise the importance of preserving the perspectives we held as a child, the innocent creative ways our minds would wander. As we grow up, we tame our meandering minds and channel them into uninspired vessels.  The simple yet deep relationship the prince shares with the rose reoccurs throughout the book. It instilled in me a sense of longing. The peculiar characters the prince meets on the planets are also manifestations of the characteristics we adults pick up along the way.  I especially loved the dynamics of the narrator with the prince. It reminded me of annoying friends with whom we share some of the deepest connections. I have been reading serious books lately so much so that I forgot the immense joy I felt in reading simple kind hearted wholesome book. The Little Prince was one such book whose character’s stayed with me.

The Little Prince, one of the widely translated works, is a must-read children’s book for adults. Often I have found that children’s book redelivers life’s simplest values which we adults have lost sight of on the path of growing up.