In Search of the Little Prince: The Story of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Gr 2–5—This year marks the 70th anniversary of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, and Landmann has written and illustrated a marvelous picture book biography on the author. Like Peter Sís's The Pilot and the Little Prince (Farrar, 2014), this work covers Saint-Exupéry's experiences and motivations, features a rich palette, and effectively connects the aviator's life to his writings. Landmann introduces her subject on the endpapers, employing photographs of him from different stages of his life. She selects aspects of his life that have inherent child appeal and foreshadow themes in his books: Saint-Exupéry listening to the fairy tales his mother told him, attempting to make his bicycle fly, taming a fox in the Moroccan desert, and finding a rose (named Consuelo) to love. Older readers will appreciate the quotes from Saint-Exupéry's novels and from letters and other sources (not cited but listed in a note): "I feel I'm a farmer of the stars." They add a lyricism that meshes well with Landmann's dreamlike, expressionistic paintings. The motifs of flying, writing, and freedom are intertwined, represented through beautiful images of beds soaring over the moon during nighttime stories and paper airplanes descending from the pilot's New York apartment. Landmann concludes by describing how Saint-Exupéry developed the character of the Little Prince, tracing parallels between the book and the pilot's own experiences, and by emphasizing the impact that the work would have on the world. A beautifully crafted tale of a beloved author.—Wendy Lukehart, District of Columbia Public Library