This beloved, world-famous allegorical classic about a young prince on a quest for knowledge is an essential read for every home library. Combining Richard Howard's translation with restored original full-color art, this definitive English-language edition of The Little Prince will capture the hearts of readers of all ages. Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince. When a pilot crashes in the Sahara Desert, he meets a little boy who asks him to draw a sheep. Gradually the Little Prince reveals more about himself: He comes from a small asteroid, where he lived alone until a rose grew there. But the rose grew demanding, and he was confused by his feelings about her. The story unfolds further from one planet to the next in a thoughtful philosophical exploration of love and the ephemeral. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first published The Little Prince in 1943, only a year before his Lockheed P-38 vanished over the Mediterranean during a reconnaissance mission. More than a half century later, this fable of love and loneliness has lost none of its power. The narrator is a downed pilot in the Sahara Desert, frantically trying to repair his wrecked plane. His efforts are interrupted one day by the apparition of a little, well, prince, who asks him to draw a sheep. "In the face of an overpowering mystery, you don't dare disobey," the narrator recalls. "Absurd as it seemed, a thousand miles from all inhabited regions and in danger of death, I took a scrap of paper and a pen out of my pocket." And so begins their dialogue, which stretches the narrator's imagination in all sorts of surprising, childlike directions. The Little Prince describes his journey from planet to planet, each tiny world populated by a single adult. It's a wonderfully inventive sequence, which evokes not only the great fairy tales but also such monuments of postmodern whimsy as Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities . And despite his tone of gentle bemusement, Saint-Exupéry pulls off some fine satiric touches, too. There's the king, for example, who commands the Little Prince to function as a one-man (or one-boy) judiciary: I have good reason to believe that there is an old rat living somewhere on my planet. I hear him at night. You could judge that old rat. From time to time you will condemn him to death. That way his life will depend on your justice. But you'll pardon him each time for economy's sake. There's only one rat. The author pokes similar fun at a businessman, a geographer, and a lamplighter, all of whom signify some futile aspect of adult existence. Yet his tale is ultimately a tender one--a heartfelt exposition of sadness and solitude, which never turns into Peter Pan -style treacle. Such delicacy of tone can present real headaches for a translator, and in her 1943 translation, Katherine Woods sometimes wandered off the mark, giving the text a slightly wooden or didactic accent. Happily, Richard Howard (who did a fine nip-and-tuck job on Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma in 1999) has streamlined and simplified to wonderful effect. The result is a new and improved version of an indestructible classic, which also restores the original artwork to full color. "Trying to be witty," we're told at one point, "leads to lying, more or less." But Saint-Exupéry's drawings offer a handy rebuttal: they're fresh, funny, and like the book itself, rigorously truthful. --James Marcus YA-This new translation into "modern" English brings a classic tale into sharper focus for today's teens without sacrificing the beauty and simplicity of the author's writing, and the "restored" artwork has all the charm of the original drawings. What appears to be a simple tale of two lost souls-one, a pilot marooned in the desert next to his ditched plane; the other, a minuscule prince in self-imposed exile from an asteroid so small that he can watch the sunset 44 times a day-reveals itself as something far more complex. What appears to be a fairy tale for children opens like the petals of the Little Prince's flower into a fantasy that has lessons for all of us. Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.   The Little Prince  "A lovely story...which covers a poetic, yearning philosophy—not the sort of fable that can be tacked down neatly at its four corners but rather reflections on what are real matters of consequence." — The New York Times Book Review  "Saint-Exupéry's most famous work -- a gentle fable of love and peace -- contains a thoughtful assessment of the details of its composition...[T]he special allure of the work is still the naively sophisticated, heartwarming tale of the little prince and his small planet." — Horn Book  “This new translation into 'modern' English brings a classic tale into sharper focus for today's teens without sacrificing the beauty and simplicity of the author's writing, and the 'restored' artwork has a