The Little Prince Book Review

After putting it off for longer than I care to admit, I finally got around to reading The Little Prince.

While this is a very quick read, I first have to say that it took me a little bit to really engage with the book. The author's introductory story about a child's interaction with adults and constantly being misunderstood seemed a little too on the nose for my tastes. However, once that child becomes an adult himself and starts to interact with the little prince, I started to understand why this book has been referred to as "beloved". 

This is a thoughtful book for thoughtful people. If you have ever seen a passage in a book and read it over and over to see how it affected you differently each time, this may be the book for you. The Little Prince is not a page turner where you're dying to see what happens to the protagonist as they navigate through their conflict. Instead, it is a slow, sad story that leads to an expected end, and even though that end is expected, it doesn't make it any less interesting or powerful. 

I think that it is important that I emphasize the fact that I think if I was a child, I would have put this book down after the first chapter. I think the events of the plot could easily be understood by a child, but I feel like interest in this book stems from interest in what the characters tell us about life, and the ability to interpret those lessons comes with a maturity that children may not yet possess. Even now as an adult, I am not entirely confident that I made the right interpretations, but maybe that's beside the point. Perhaps it only matters that I made my own interpretations and did not take each event literally. 

Thinking back, I remember feelings of sadness and hope mixed together throughout the story. It reminded me of different times in my life and different decisions I've had to make. I don't think that I would ever reread the entire book, but I could easily see myself rereading passages to remember specific insights. It isn't anything that I would call life-changing, but there are several instances that are very memorable. 

In the end, I did enjoy The Little Prince, but I would not say that I loved it. For being a children's book that is not entirely for children, I give it 7/10 tiny planets.