The Little Prince - Play Guide
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Transcript of The Little Prince - Play Guide
Theatre Calgary’s Play Guides and InterACTive Learning Program
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The Play Guide for The Little Prince – The Musical was created by:
Zachary Moull
Assistant Dramaturg
Kaye Dauter-Booth
Learning & Community Programs Coordinator
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The Little Prince – The Musical runs from Jan. 19 to Feb. 28, 2016
For tickets, visit theatrecalgary.com or call (403) 294-7447
Table of Contents
THE BASICS
The Company .................................................................... 01
The Story .......................................................................... 02
Who’s Who? ...................................................................... 03
EXPLORATIONS
A Note from Artistic Director Dennis Garnhum ..................... 04
Creating The Little Prince – The Musical
Nicolas Lloyd Webber and James D. Reid .................. 05
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Author and Aviator .................................................. 07
Writing The Little Prince ........................................... 09
Léon Werth and The Little Prince’s Dedication ........... 12
An Explosion of Imagination
Bretta Gerecke’s Designs for The Little Prince ............ 13
The Little Prince Miscellany ................................................ 15
CONVERSATIONS
Conversation Starters ........................................................ 16
Draw Me A Sheep .............................................................. 16
Build Your Own Planet ....................................................... 17
Big Reads from Calgary Public Library ................................. 19
Sources ............................................................................ 21
THE BASICS - 1 -
The Company
Theatre Calgary in association with Lamplighter Drama, London, UK
presents the World Premiere of
THE LITTLE PRINCE – THE MUSICAL
Based on the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Adapted by Nicholas Lloyd Webber and James D. Reid
THE CAST The Little Prince Sarah Caraher
The Pilot Adam Brazier The Snake Louise Pitre
The Rose Elicia MacKenzie
The Fox Jennie Neumann
PLEIADES – THE STARS Taygete Chelsey Duplak
Maia Jocelyn Gauthier Electra Keely Hutton
Celaeno Nicole Norsworthy
Sterope Yemie Sonuga Alcyone Jena VanElslander
MEN ON PLANETS
The Businessman Kevin Forestell The Drunk Julio Fuentes
The Geographer W. Joseph Matheson The Vain Man Andrew McAllister
The Lamplighter Alexander Nicoll
The King Justin Raisbeck
THE CREATIVE TEAM Director Dennis Garnhum
Composers, Book and Lyrics Nicholas Lloyd Webber and James D. Reid Set and Costume Design Bretta Gerecke
Orchestrations composed by Simon Lee with Nicholas Lloyd Webber and James D. Reid
Music Supervisor Simon Lee
Musical Director Elizabeth Baird Choreographer Lisa Stevens
Projection and Video Design Sean Nieuwenhuis Production Dramaturg Zachary Moull
Associate Choreographer and
Dance Captain Jena VanElslander
Stage Manager Jennifer Swan
Assistant Stage Manager Sara Turner
Apprentice Stage Manager Alexandra Shewan
THE BASICS - 2 -
The Story
A Pilot crashes his plane in the middle of the desert and meets a Little
Prince, who asks him to draw a sheep. A Snake appears and explains that
the Little Prince comes from an asteroid and has been wandering for
nearly a year. She sends the Pilot back in time so that he can learn from
the Little Prince's journey:
Over a year ago on Asteroid B612, the Little Prince fell in love with
a beautiful Rose, but they soon seemed to be incompatible. So he
left his asteroid to search for a true friend, meeting five foolish
grown-ups on nearby planets and learning an important lesson
about devotion from a sixth. The Little Prince landed on Earth in
the empty desert, where he met the Snake and made a deal: if he
finds what he is looking for within one year, he will return to the
desert and allow the Snake to send him home with a single
venomous bite. He explored the Earth, searching for a friend. He
found a whole garden of roses and was stunned to learn that his
Rose was not unique.
The Pilot, still watching the story unfold, tries to intervene and wakes up
back in present time, alone in the desert by his crashed plane. The Little
Prince appears, exactly as before.
INTERMISSION
The Little Prince asks the Pilot to draw a sheep for him to take on his
impending journey back to his asteroid, and the Pilot eventually obliges.
When the Pilot realizes they have run out of water and will soon die of
thirst, the Little Prince sets out into the desert, saying that it hides a well.
The Pilot follows, and as they walk, the Little Prince shares the story of
how he met a Fox:
THE BASICS - 3 -
The Fox found the Little Prince crying next to the rose garden, and
they slowly became friends through “taming” each other. The Fox
then sent the Little Prince back to the rose garden, where he now
understood how his Rose was different from the others and why he
needed to return home to her on Asteroid B612. The Fox gave the
Little Prince one last secret – which he shares with the Pilot.
On the verge of death, the Pilot takes strength in the Fox's secret and the
Little Prince's wisdom. The Pilot finds the well and is restored. He goes
back to repair his plane, while the Little Prince makes his final
arrangements with the Snake...
Who’s Who?
The Little Prince: A boy from Asteroid B612
The Pilot: An aviator who crashes his plane in the middle of the desert
The Rose: The Little Prince’s love, a rose who grows on his asteroid
The Pilot’s Rose: The Pilot’s love, a woman in a red dress
The Snake: A desert dweller with supernatural powers
The Fox: A friend of the Little Prince once they “tame” each other
The Pleiades: Stars who guide the Pilot and the Little Prince
Men on Planets: Grown-ups who each live on their own planet – a King,
a Businessman, a Geographer, a Vain Man, a Drunk, and a Lamplighter
Roses
Sheep
Chickens
A Chorus of Grown-ups
EXPLORATIONS - 4 -
A Note from Artistic Director Dennis Garnhum
Theatre Calgary is proud to begin the New Year with this world-premiere
adaptation of The Little Prince. I
first encountered this project
three years ago, and since that
time I have enjoyed listening to
the beautiful score andimagining
the day when the story would
come to life on our stage. We are
partnering with the British
theatrical producers Lamplighter
in our first-ever partnership with
a European company. The
brilliant writing team, Nicholas
Lloyd Webber and James D.
Reid, have been working closely with us for the past few years and have
been here in Calgary since December in orderto prepare this production for
its debut. This has truly been an international collaboration of epic
proportions.
It has been said that the fantasy world of The Little Prince works because
the logic is based on the imagination of children, rather than the strict
realism of adults. We’ve dared ourselves to live in the abstract, to paint
bold pictures, and to chart the most outrageously thrilling journeys
without hesitation. The life lessons of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s
beautiful novella are here set to music in the most surprising and
delightful of ways as the Pilot and the Little Prince search the planet
Earth, the galaxy, and the stars to better understand themselves. Welcome
to the wild and wonderful world of The Little Prince.
DENNIS GARNHUM
Artistic Director
Director Dennis Garnhum, music supervisor
Simon Lee, and composers Nicholas Lloyd
Webber and James D. Reid explore one of
the musical's songs in May 2015
EXPLORATIONS - 5 -
Creating The Little Prince – The Musical Nicholas Lloyd Webber and James D. Reid
Composers Nicholas Lloyd Webber
and James D. Reid, who co-wrote
the music, lyrics, and libretto for
The Little Prince – The Musical,
have been working on the project
since 2009. They spoke about their
creative journey on the first day of
rehearsal at Theatre Calgary. The
following is an edited transcript:
James: We’d finished a cycle of
songs based on Vivaldi for the
BBC’s preschool channel, and I
basically said to Nicholas,
“What are we going to do
now?”
Nicholas: We went down to my
house for the weekend, and
James kept throwing The Little
Prince at me and saying that we had to do this. So we said that if by the
end of the Sunday we hadn’t written a decent song, we’d give up. And it
got to that last night and I think we’d pretty much given up, hadn’t we?
James: We’d literally given up. It was two or three in the morning, so
technically Monday.
Nicholas: We decided to give it one last try and we sat back down at the
piano. James had opened the book up towards the end and there’s this
line that’s repeated, “Because it is she...” I remember that all of five
minutes later we’d written that song.
James D. Reid and Nicholas Lloyd Webber
on the first day of rehearsal
EXPLORATIONS - 6 -
James: The line is from the original Katherine Wood translation, which is
quite odd at times, but there’s a music within it.
Nicholas: It’s in a natural 3/4 time signature so we had ourselves a phrase.
James: And so we just started singing this little tune... and then we passed
out.
Nicholas: Then it became an interesting challenge to make the whole
thing come to life. With the Snake for example, instead of writing a
traditional evil snake character, we tried to give her some traits that we
could recognize as human. One day James’s iPod was on shuffle and an
Edith Piaf song came on and we went, “hang on a minute.” So that was
our way in for the Snake, and we’ve tried to bring all these characters to
life in a way that’s tangible. Music was always the starting point in our
writing sessions, with James on the guitar and myself on the piano.
James: There are two elements to The Little Prince really – there’s what
seems to be a children’s story, and underneath there’s a story that is very
autobiographical of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry himself. For us, that
brought up so much material to draw from.
Nicholas: It’s worth noting that quite quickly we decided to focus on the
Pilot, and how the Little Prince – who’s almost like his younger self –
helps him learn to engage with the world that he’s left behind.
James: This is very much the Pilot’s story, although the Little Prince’s
journey is incredibly important too because the two stories are parallel
and reflect each other. A pilot crashing a plane in the desert is a metaphor
for a man being broken, and he has to fix himself before he can fix his
plane. He learns how to do that from his mentor, the Little Prince.
EXPLORATIONS - 7 -
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Author and Aviator
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, now best known as the author of The Little
Prince, was part of a generation
of pioneering French aviators
who captured the country’s
imagination in the 1920s and
‘30s as they opened up airmail
routes to the far reaches of
Africa and South America.
Saint-Exupéry’s clear-eyed and
evocative tales – which he
sometimes wrote in mid-air –
conveyed the transcendent
experience of flight at a time
when few had journeyed into
the sky.
Born in 1900 into an aristocratic
family, Saint-Exupéry spent
much of his childhood roaming
free on the grounds of a château near Lyons. A creative child with a love
of gardening and animals, he routinely woke his family in the middle of
the night to recite fresh poetry and once made an unsuccessful attempt at
designing a flying bicycle. He found his passion when a pilot from a
nearby airfield took him for his first flight at the age of twelve.
After a short stint as a military pilot in his early twenties – which ended in
his first of many plane crashes – Saint-Exupéry gave up flying at the
request of his then-fiancée’s family and took a job working in an office. He
was marvellously unsuited to bookkeeping and filing, and neither the
career change nor the fiancée lasted long. By 1926, he secured a position as
Saint-Exupéry in 1933
EXPLORATIONS - 8 -
a pilot for the Latécoère company (later Aéropostale) flying mail routes in
the northwest of Africa. In 1929, he was transferred to Argentina, where
he met and married Consuelo Suncin, who would become his inspiration
for the Rose in The Little Prince. Although they loved each other deeply
and Saint-Exupéry called her his muse, their relationship was stormy and
had many separations.
In this early era of aviation, pilots were true adventurers who had to
handle unreliable planes and untrustworthy navigation systems. Saint-
Exupéry was not one of the period’s most legendary flyers, but in his
parallel career as a writer, he helped build the mythology of those who
were. His second novel Night Flight, published in 1931, tells the story of
three mail planes headed for Buenos Aires on an ill-fated night; the book
was praised as the best description of flight ever written, and Saint-
Exupéry’s heroic pilots and their thrilling exploits struck a chord with
readers. Applications for pilot training doubled in the next year.
"The earth grew spangled with light-signals as each house lit its star,
searching the vastness of the night as a lighthouse sweeps the sea. Now
every place that sheltered human life was sparkling."
–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight
While trying to break the speed record from Paris to Saigon in December
of 1935, Saint-Exupéry crashed his plane in the Libyan Desert (the
northeast corner of the Sahara). Disoriented and with few supplies beyond
a thermos of coffee, Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic André Prévot had
little hope of rescue. After two days with no sign of a search mission, they
chose to walk east, for the sole reason that one of Saint-Exupéry’s
colleagues had saved himself by walking in that direction after a crash in
the Andes Mountains.
“What saves a man is to take a step. And another step. It's the same first
step, repeated..."
–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
EXPLORATIONS - 9 -
Saint-Exupéry and Prévot were seeing mirages and near death from
dehydration when, on the fourth day, they were rescued by Bedouins.
Saint-Exupéry wrote about the desert crash and his survival experience in
his 1939 memoir Wind, Sand and Stars and later drew upon the tale for The
Little Prince.
Writing The Little Prince
In the early days of World War II, Saint-Exupéry joined the French Air
Force and flew reconnaissance missions during the German invasion of
France. After the fall of Paris, he escaped the country and went into exile
in New York, hoping to persuade the United States to enter the war
quickly. In 1942 he published Flight to Arras, a distillation of his wartime
experiences into one harrowing flight over enemy territory. By presenting
a noble vision of France’s war efforts to the American public, the book did
much to sway public opinion.
Accounts of Saint-Exupéry’s time in New York reveal a man who
delighted in whimsy and had his eye on the sky. He launched fleets of
paper airplanes from the windows of his Central Park apartment and once
Saint-Exupéry poses next to his crashed plane in the Libyan Desert
EXPLORATIONS - 10 -
threw a basket of paper helicopters from the top of the Empire State
Building – prototypes of a motorless autogiro that he thought might help
in the liberation of France.
But at the same time, Saint-Exupéry’s health was declining after a lifetime
of plane crashes. His latest attempt at reconciling with his wife Consuelo
was tumultuous, and he was
feeling mounting guilt at the
fate of his compatriots living
under the German occupation.
After Flight to Arras, he had no
creative project to focus on.
Elizabeth Reynal, the wife of his
publisher, suggested he distract
himself by writing about the
cheerful little fellow that he had
drawn over and over again in
the margins of the manuscript
for his war story.
In fact, Saint-Exupéry had been
sketching the Little Prince since
the mid-1930s on notepads,
letters, and even restaurant
tablecloths. But the origins of the character were mysterious. According to
biographer Stacy Schiff, Saint-Exupéry would only say that one day “he
looked down on what he had thought was a blank sheet of paper to find a
tiny figure.”
Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince in a burst of creative energy over the
summer and fall of 1942, often working late into the night, fueled by
coffee, cigarettes, and Coca Cola. He created its famous illustrations
himself with a set of children’s watercolour paints. Much of the work took
place at the apartment of his friend Silvia Reinhardt, whose poodle
Consuelo de Saint-Exupery in 1942
EXPLORATIONS - 11 -
modeled for the Saint-Exupéry’s drawings of sheep. Since Reinhardt
spoke little French and Saint-Exupéry refused to take English lessons, the
pair devised their own non-verbal ways of communicating – which may
have inspired the unique friendship between the Fox and the Little Prince.
The Little Prince was published in April of 1943. Some early readers were
surprised by Saint-Exupéry's abrupt shift from thrilling accounts of
adventure and war to what seemed a bit like children’s literature. P.L.
Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, had the insight that The Little
Prince’s true message was for grown-ups (or the grown-ups that children
would become). Children naturally see with their hearts, she explained in
her review of the book, so they will not need the Fox’s secret until they
have to find it again later in life. “The Little Prince will shine upon children
with a sidewise gleam,” she wrote. “It will strike them in some place that
is not the mind and glow there until the time comes for them to
comprehend it.”
That same month, Saint-Exupéry left for North Africa to rejoin his
squadron in the Free French Air Force, despite concerns that his age and
many prior injuries made him unfit to fly. Before he shipped out, he put
the coffee-stained manuscript in a crumpled brown envelope and gave it
to Reinhardt as a parting gift, saying “I wish I had something splendid for
you to remember me by, but this is all I have.”
In the decades since it was published, The Little Prince has become one of
the world’s most widely read works of literature. It has sold more than
140 million copies and has been translated into more than 250 languages.
Artists have adapted it into any medium imaginable: plays, operas,
graphic novels, movies, board games, and more.
Saint-Exupéry didn’t live to see its success. On July 31, 1944, he took off
from an airbase in Corsica to fly a reconnaissance mission over the south
of France. He never returned. Remnants of his plane were finally found
more than fifty years later, in the Mediterranean Sea near Marseilles.
EXPLORATIONS - 12 -
Léon Werth and The Little Prince’s Dedication
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry famously dedicated The Little Prince to his close
friend Léon Werth, a French Jewish art critic and surrealist writer who
was among the estimated two million refugees who had fled Paris during
the German invasion in 1940. In Richard Howard’s translation, the first
page of the book reads:
TO LEON WERTH
I ask children to forgive me for dedicating this book to a
grown-up. I have a serious excuse: this grown-up is the best
friend I have in the world. I have another excuse: this
grown-up can understand everything, even books for
children. I have a third excuse: he lives in France, where he
is hungry and cold. He needs to be comforted. If all these
excuses are not enough, then I want to dedicate this book
to the child whom this grown-up once was. All grown-ups
were children first. (But few of them remember it.) So I
correct my dedication:
TO LEON WERTH
WHEN HE WAS A LITTLE BOY
Saint-Exupéry and Werth never saw each other again after 1940. Since The
Little Prince was not published in France until after the end of the war,
Werth was not able to read the book – and Saint-Exupéry’s dedication –
until several months after his friend had disappeared.
“A well spreads its power far and wide, like love.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
EXPLORATIONS - 13 -
An Explosion of Imagination Bretta Gerecke’s Designs for The Little Prince – The Musical
At the start of the design process for Theatre Calgary’s The Little Prince –
The Musical, director Dennis Garnhum asked his team for an explosion of
imagination. “When a director gives you a gift like that,” says set and
costume designer Bretta Gerecke, “you have a responsibility to run with
it.”
One of Canada’s most imaginative designers, Gerecke is uniquely
qualified to rise to this challenge. The resident designer for Edmonton’s
Catalyst Theatre, she creates innovative designs for the company’s award-
winning original productions such as Nevermore, Hunchback, and
Frankenstein (which was our 2009 High Performance Rodeo presentation).
She’s known for her creative uses of unexpected materials – her designs
call for tinfoil and bubble wrap
as often as lumber and fabric,
converting everyday elements
into fantastical creations on the
stage. “The transformation,”
Gerecke says, “is part of the
magic.”
See images from Gerecke’s past
designs on her website here
The Little Prince speaks
eloquently about the power of
creativity through the story of a
pilot who has forgotten his
childhood talent for drawing.
The original book, written by
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is
filled with the author’s own
Costume rendering for The Rose by
Bretta Gerecke
EXPLORATIONS - 14 -
illustrations of his characters
and the marvellous worlds they
inhabit. For Gerecke, these
evocative drawings were sparks
of inspiration. “Saint-Exupéry’s
illustrations are clear and clean-
lined,” she explains. “The way
he draws allows you to fill in
the blanks with your
imagination.”
Gerecke hopes that her work
for The Little Prince – The
Musical will spur imaginations
in much the same way. “My job
as a designer,” she says, “is to
help the audience go to places
that they may have never
imagined before, in this case on a ride to other planets. When I go to the
theatre myself, I want to be transported. I want it to feel like a joy.”
This article was first published in the house programme for The Crucible, and it
appears in an altered form in the Winter edition of Arts Commons Magazine.
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a
single man contemplates it, bearing within him the
image of a cathedral.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras
Costume rendering for The Snake by
Bretta Gerecke
EXPLORATIONS - 15 -
The Little Prince Miscellany
Baobabs
The Little Prince’s asteroid has
a baobab problem. These large
trees grow mainly in Africa,
particularly on the island of
Madagascar. They can grow
30m tall and 10m wide, storing
thousands of litres of water in
their enormous trunks. So the
Little Prince has to be diligent
and pick the sprouts before
they grow too large and
destroy his home.
The Pleiades
Seven stars who guide the Pilot and the Little Prince on their journey
through space. The Pleiades are part of the Taurus constellation and have
been known by many cultures since ancient times. In Greek mythology,
they are described as seven sisters.
The Fox
The Fox in The Little Prince lives
near wheatfields and chickens
and not in the desert, but Saint-
Exupéry based the illustrations
in the book on a species of
desert fox called the fennec,
which he knew well from his
time stationed at an airfield in
Morocco. The fennec’s large
ears keep cool in the hot desert.
Baobab trees in Madagascar
(photo by Bernard Gagnon)
A fennec fox (photo by Dierk Schaefer)
CONVERSATIONS - 16 -
Conversation Starters
What role do imagination and creativity play in your daily life?
When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Is there something you loved to do as a young child that you don’t do
anymore? Why did you stop?
Should promises always be kept, no matter what?
Do you run away from challenges or meet them head on?
What do you do on a daily basis to tend to your relationships?
How do you make new friends?
What does it mean to see with your heart?
Have you ever received wisdom from an unexpected source?
What do you think happens to the Little Prince at the end of the play?
What about the Pilot?
Draw Me A Sheep
When he first appears, the Little Prince asks the Pilot to draw him a sheep.
This is hard for him to do since he hasn’t drawn anything since he was a
young child. In the empty space below, draw a sheep for the Little Prince:
CONVERSATIONS - 17 -
Build Your Own Planet
In early January, Beakerhead and Theatre Calgary partnered to bring a
group of 24 people to the backstage of the Max Bell Theatre into the world
of The Little Prince – the Musical for a workshop led by the production’s set
and costume designer, Bretta Gerecke. Bretta walked the group through
her creative design and problem-solving process, and then they designed
and built their own beautiful, out-of-this-world, creative inflatable moons
and planets built around weather balloons.
Now it’s your turn to build a planet! Create your own unique art
installation in the spirit of The Little Prince through Bretta’s design process
of experimentation, problem-solving, and getting your hands dirty.
This project is about activating the imagination, so use whatever materials
inspire you. The instructions on the next page are just a guideline.
Completed planets in our scene shop at the end of the day-long workshop
CONVERSATIONS - 18 -
Materials
Newspaper
Liquid glue
Medium-sized bowl (one per five planet-makers)
Beach ball or balloon
Paint (variety of colours)
Paint brush
Foam balls, paper, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, straws, glitter, ribbon,
cardboard – anything you can think of to add to your planet!
Papier Mâché
1. Mix ¼ cup of glue and some water in a medium bowl (one bowl per
five planet-makers). The end result should be a slightly runny mixture.
2. Tear your newspaper into thin strips.
3. Blow up your beach ball or balloon.
4. Dip the strips of newspaper in the mixture in your bowl, one by one,
eventually covering the entire balloon. You can smooth out the bumps
as you go or leave them, depending on whether your planet has
smooth or rocky terrain.
5. If your mixture begins to run out, repeat step 1.
6. Let the balloon dry overnight.
Decorate!
1. Start by painting your planet the colour of your choice (acrylic paint
dries the fastest).
2. Get creative! Add rings, moons, baobabs, alien life forms, cities, and
anything else you can imagine using any material! Remember – there
are no mistakes, and experimentation is the key to creative success!
3. What else can you do with your planet after you have decorated? Can
you make it float? Rotate? The sky is the limit!
We want to see your planets! Send us pictures of your art on Twitter
or Instagram using #tcLittlePrince or email [email protected]
CONVERSATIONS - 19 -
Big Reads from Calgary Public Library By Rosemary Griebel
Calgary Public Library has more than 50 copies of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s
The Little Prince. Click here to find one at a branch near you!
The Little Prince Graphic Novel, by Antoine de Saint-
Exupéry, adapted by Joann Sfar
Graphic novel, 2010. Celebrated French cartoonist Sfar provides a
wonderful comic adaptation of Saint-Exupéy's timeless classic.
Hand-chosen by Saint-Exupéry's French publishers for his literary
style and sensitivity to the original, Sfar has endeavoured to
recreate this beloved story, both honouring the original and
stretching it to new heights.
The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry, by Peter Sis
Illustrated biography, 2014. Sis's picture-book biography of the
famous French aviator and author invites readers to take time and
attend to the narrative in both the straightforward text and the
nuanced, complex pictures. A beautiful and densely imagined
portrait of Saint-Exupéry.
Saint-Exupéry: A Biography, by Stacy Schiff
Biography, 1994. Saint-Exupéry was one of the most remarkable
figures in 20th-century history: a pioneer aviator, a swashbuckling
international hero, and author of many international bestsellers.
Based on extensive interviews and previously unpublished
material, this book brings Saint-Exupéry to life, and separates the
man from the myth.
CONVERSATIONS - 20 -
The Tale of the Rose: The Passion That Inspired the Little
Prince, by Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry
Memoir, 2001. Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry’s account of their
extraordinary marriage to Antoine. It is a tumultuous love story
about a man who yearned for the stars and the spirited woman
who gave him the strength to fulfill his dreams.
Wind, Sand and Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Memoir, 1939/1967. Both a gripping tale of adventure and a poetic
meditation, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Wind, Sand and Stars is the
lyrical autobiography of an aviation pioneer who recounts his
flight adventures while also meditating on the human spirit and
the simple pleasures of life and relationships.
The Once & Future King , by T.H. White
Fiction, 1939. For readers who are looking for an enduring classic
like The Little Prince that combines powerful storytelling with great
psychological power, this retelling of the Arthurian epic is written
for an ageless audience and sets the bar for historical fantasy.
Click on the book covers
to check availability at
Calgary Public Library!
CONVERSATIONS - 21 -
Sources
Gopnik, Adam. “The Strange Triumph of The Little Prince.” The New Yorker,
Apr 29 2014.
“Pleiades.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. The Little Prince. 1943. Trans. Richard Howard.
Harcourt: New York, 2000.
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. Wind, Sand and Stars. 1939. Trans. William Rees.
Penguin: New York, 1995.
Schiff, Stacy. Saint-Exupéry. 1994. Holt: New York, 2006.
