The Little Prince

In a year with the overarching concept "Quest," we could not pass up the opportunity to do a novel study on The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery. We talked about many themes in this book, but the focus was on the idea of exploration and enlightenment. As one reviewer put it:

"As the critic James Higgins points out, each of the novel’s main characters hungers both for adventure (exploration of the outside world) and for introspection (exploration within himself). It is through his encounter with the lost prince in the lonely, isolated desert that the friendless narrator achieves a newfound understanding of the world. But in his story of the little prince’s travels, Saint-Exupéry shows that spiritual growth must also involve active exploration. The narrator and the prince may be stranded in the desert, but they are both explorers who make a point of traveling the world around them. Through a combination of exploring the world and exploring their own feelings, the narrator and the little prince come to understand more clearly their own natures and their places in the world."

We studied the characters, compared and contrasted their character traits, and thought about the personalities that might go with different flower types after reading about the prince's precocious rose. After a lot of thinking and writing about what we read, we got to see the play performed at the Seattle Children's Theater. What a wonderful book!