From Barnes & Noble
Fans of that stellar Little Prince can celebrate his 60th anniversary with a stunning gift edition! A must-have for any collector, this edition comes with a satin ribbon bookmark and presentation page, all enclosed in a cloth slipcase with gold stamping. The starry prince has delighted readers for six decades, but he's never looked better.
From the Publisher
After being stranded in a desert after a crash, a pilot comes in contact with a captivating little prince who recounts his journey from planet to planet and his search for what is most important in life. For over sixty-five years Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic, The Little Prince, has captured readers' hearts. The whimsical story with a fairy tale feel has sold over 3 million copies in all formats. This exciting pop-up edition includes the complete original text accompanied by Saint-Exupery's beautiful illustrations brought to life through paper engineering. Perfect for longtime fans and those meeting the little prince for the first time!
Publishers Weekly
This unabridged edition of the classic story about the prince from a tiny planet “hardly bigger than a house” integrates the original illustrations into pop-ups, wheels, and flaps. The text is gracefully balanced against the interactive elements as the Prince shares his story: flaps reveal images like the drawing of a sheep that the narrator makes for him, and delicate pop-ups feature characters he's met, like the clownlike lamp lighter. The pleasing visual effects are subtle, but add an appropriate sense of magic. Ages 9–12. (Oct.)
Publishers Weekly
Many old friends revisit readers in handsome new volumes. Always welcome is that charming visitor from another planet, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. A 60th-anniversary gift edition features a cloth slipcase, a satin ribbon bookmark and a bookplate. The fable remains as lyrically haunting as ever in Richard Howard's new (2000) translation. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Publishers Weekly
Young Osment (The Sixth Sense; Pay It Forward) again proves his mettle as an actor, giving voice to the Little Prince in this crisp, full-cast production of the literary classic. He approaches the role with a gentleness and sensitivity that touches the heart and never sounds maudlin. As the pilot whose plane has crashed in the Sahara, Gere plays it low-key, creating a perfect partner for Osment's interplanetary-traveling, wise-beyond-his-years prince. Gere expresses just the right mix of amusement and bewilderment as the prince interrupts the pilot's efforts to repair his plane with a request that he draw a sheep. The adept performances capture the timeless nature of Saint-Exup ry's fable about how a child sees the important things in life much more clearly than many adults do. All ages. (Dec.) FYI: Last year marked the 100th anniversary of Saint-Exup ry's birth. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Candice Ransom
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Children's Literature
Those of us concerned with quality preschool literature long for the demise of inappropriate books repackaged into board books. With the publication of four slip-cased board books based on the classic allegory The Little Prince (Friends of the Little Prince, Counting With the Little Prince, A Day With the Little Prince, and I Am the Little Prince/Je Suis Le Petit Prince), one hopes the end is near. On the surface, I Am the Little Prince seems to employ good board book design elements: brief text printed on nursery-pastel backgrounds, watercolor illustrations on contrasting white backgrounds. So far so good. Closer examination reveals that some of the art retains it original clarity while others parts are poorly reproduced. Besides murky illustrations, the bilingual text and art don't always work together. On one page the text reads: "I live on a small planet./J'habite sur petite planete." The accompanying illustration shows the Little Prince standing on his lumpy planet, sweeping out the fenced-in volcano. The text makes no mention of the Little Prince's actions. Children sharing this book would wonder, "What is he doing?" For this age group, illustrations should amplify the story, not go off in another direction. This is what happens when books for older children are reformatted into board books with no regard to the needs and interests of toddlers. 2003, Harcourt Red Wagon, Ages 1 to 3.
School Library Journal
Gr 1-4-Actors Richard Gere and Haley Joel Osment read Antoine de Saint-Exupery's book with the assistance of several other actors and actresses. A pilot stranded in the desert awakens one morning to see, standing before him, a most extraordinary little fellow, who teaches him the secret of what is really important in life. Gere reads the part of the Pilot, and Osment takes the part of the Little Prince. The reading by all the participants is accomplished with great skill and feeling. Piano and strings provide very lovely background music composed by Alexandre Stankevicius. This abridged recording of the classic book should be welcome in most library collections.-Beverly Bixler, San Antonio Public Library, TX Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Children's Book Watch
Richard Gere is the principle narrator in this superbly produced CD format version of Antoine de SaintEXupery's classic children's story The Little Prince. This fifty minute production is a technically flawless audio version of a pilot stranded in the desert and wakening one morning to see before him a little fellow who captures the hearts and imaginations of all who read (and now hear) this remarkable modern fable. Haley Joel Osment gives voice to the Little Prince, while Marina Orsini, Adam Frost, Richard Allen, Dave Walsh, Ara Y. Kentenjian, Patrick Selitz, and Mickey Kessler lend their talents to this multicast production, with music by AleXxandre Stankevicius. The Little Prince is highly entertaining, enthusiastically recommended, and a "must" for school and community library audiobook CD collections.
Kirkus Reviews
"[E]yes are blind. You have to look with the heart," says the little prince, which makes this pop-up edition of the 1943 classic a bit of an odd duck. De Saint-Exupery's minimalist illustrations become full-color paper-engineered elements in a blown-up, two-inch-thick unabridged edition. Flaps lift, figures pop, tableaux emerge in ingenious fashion, creating a reading experience as surreal as the story. But the tension between text and image inherent in any illustrated book is exacerbated to the nth degree here, as the beguiling doodads beckon readers to race through the pages, leaving the story they're meant to illustrate behind. The contemplative fable is turned into a mere excuse for paper whimsy, the fun of making the prince turn to meet the fox overriding the wonder of the interaction. Too cool for its own good. (Pop-up/fiction. 10 & up)