O Principezinho (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, or touched, they are felt with the heart.”

EN To this date, this is one of my favorite books since my childhood. I have read the Portuguese version numerous times and the English version only once. This analysis will be based on the English version. The truth is that this desire to reread the book arose from the impulse of buying a collection of books with such beautiful covers (as you can see in the image), which I could not resist. They're just gorgeous.

I consider this masterpiece indispensable to any child or adult, not only for the story it tells, but also for the important messages that make us reflect on our life. It is a wonderful book, with many subtle critics of the human adult, being the main one the lack of recognition of innocence and imagination as something beautiful and the appreciation for stealthy and material things. This book tries to connect us with our inner child, appealing to the search of our innocence that fades throughout our adult life. Because life itself, people and experiences almost force us to detach from children's play, making us impatient, serious and sometimes monotonously sad.

“I have spent lots of time with grown-ups. I have seen them at close range… which hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.”

"The Little Prince" is a combination of both sides of the coin: the adult perspective connected to a closed mind and the perspective of a child connected to the imagination. We start this story with a pilot who tells us his childhood memories, the depreciation he felt when he showed his drawings to adults and then we have this pilot in an adult version behaving exactly like those adults who once hurt him. It was only when a very special child entered his life, the little prince, who was lost and eager to find his rose, that everything changed. At first it seemed very trivial to the pilot because he did not understand the importance that a rose had on the boy. This child came from another planet and to reach Planet Earth he had to cross many other planets occupied by a single adult that personified a superfluous aspect in life, thus being addressed themes such as loneliness, friendship, love and death and all the surrounding characteristics of human nature.

Again, I must emphasize how special this book is. And the end of the book can have several readings and interpretations, so I'll leave that open to you. I just have to remind you of the importance we must give to dreams, smiles and what really matters in life. As we can read in the book:

"(...) One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”

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