April Book of the Month: The Little Prince Deluxe Edition

Our April Book of the Month is a beautiful deluxe edition of The Little Prince, featuring the original artwork by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

This month’s selection was chosen by Corinne Gregson, who selected this timeless story for its ability to speak to both children and adults alike. With its themes of imagination, curiosity, and seeing the world through a different lens, The Little Prince beautifully reflects the spirit of exploration we see in the students who visit Old Baldy every day.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is one of those rare books that, while generally considered to be a children’s book today, adults might just enjoy even more. A must-read for all ages, this classic story transcends genres and offers all the whimsy and magic of childhood while remaining self-critical of ‘grown-ups’ and their societal rules. 

Our narrator, a pilot, meets the Little Prince after crashing his plane in the Sahara Desert. The Little Prince reveals that he has come from an asteroid, where he has been seemingly alone all his life with the exception of a single rose on his asteroid that the Little Prince fell in love with. However, after he caught the rose in a lie, the Little Prince decided he could not trust her and began to explore the universe and other planets to cure his loneliness.

It is through his encounter with our narrator in the Sahara Desert that we learn about the Little Prince’s travels and curiosities. By relaying his stories, we the readers get to examine the strange and narrow-minded world of adults through the eyes of the Little Prince, a curious, confident, and innocent child. Thus, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a pilot himself, is able to provide commentary and criticism of societal norms, likely drawing upon his experiences in WWII.

While The Little Prince is of course a widely popular book (the second most translated book behind the Bible) with many different versions, the 2024 First Mariner Classics Deluxe Edition we have in our shop features a 2018 introduction by Stacy Schiff, author of Saint-Exupery: A Biography. This introduction briefly but comprehensively examines Saint-Exupery’s life and provides intriguing and inquisitive insights into his writing process. Perhaps most compelling to me, a former art school student and AI-hater, are Saint-Exupery’s watercolor illustrations featured beautifully in this edition. As Schiff describes, “Since the 1930s [Saint Exupery] had sketched cousins of his petulant hero on letters, tablecloths, menus, bills, dry-cleaner cardboards… soon enough Saint-Exupery had bought himself a set of children’s watercolors in a local drugstore and begun to work.” These illustrations are the perfect counterpart to the whimsical sensibilities of the Little Prince and the endearing relationship between the Little Prince and our narrator, and their hand drawn character is so refreshing in today’s digital age.

As the Old Baldy Foundation remains in the throes of field trip season, we have the privilege to witness the genuine curiosity, wonder, honesty, and spontaneity of the children that visit Bald Head Island and our site. The Little Prince, written in 1943, perfectly captures these same sensibilities as though it was written today by an incredibly precocious child, displaying Saint-Exupery’s talents for constructing the kind of perspective that is so often lost to adulthood.

This special edition is available in the Museum Shop for 20% off—perfect for readers of all ages or as a meaningful gift.