The Top Three Reasons I Love The Little Prince

About the Book

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

First published in April 1943

GoodReads Description

Moral allegory and spiritual autobiography, The Little Prince is the most translated book in the French language. With a timeless charm it tells the story of a little boy who leaves the safety of his own tiny planet to travel the universe, learning the vagaries of adult behaviour through a series of extraordinary encounters. His personal odyssey culminates in a voyage to Earth and further adventures.

The Top Three Reasons I Love The Little Prince

1. The Little Prince provides its audience with several important moral lessons.  The strongest of these discuss love, loss, and the imagination.  Each of these things are too easily neglected in our adult lives. We look more toward money and daily problems than to the strength of love.  I know that this sounds rather cliche, but these are the small things that turn out to be BIG things.  These are the things that we need to hold onto in order to improve our world. 
2. Death is handled not as a horrifying thing but as a passage to a new part of life.  I think that this is one of the most beautiful and most peaceful ways to explain death.  I truly think that if we taught our children about death the way that this book teaches it, death would sound less terrifying to our children.  Death is final and it is sad for those left behind, but it is a permanent transition and a part of life.
3. I am so in love with the illustrations in this book.  I know that most people look for more realistic art or more advanced art skills, but the child-like illustrations truly bring the moral lessons of this novel to life.  I think this book would lose a lot of its charm and meaning if the illustrations were changed at all.