Book review Le Petit prince (The Little Prince)

 One of my goals is to improve my French knowledge until I can speak it fluently. I already have a base, but I feel I’m still to insecure to start a random conversation in the language. One of the best things you can do when learning a language is to immerse yourself into it. And a good way for beginners with a minimum knowledge, is to read comics or children’s books in the language. So that’s what I tried this week to see if I already reached a good level of understanding for the book Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

The book cover of my e-book:

Le petit Prince is one of the only children’s books I know that are written by a French writer (for now). I’ve read it before in English as a child and a couple years ago I read it in French, but I still felt that I didn’t understand everything completely and I needed a dictionary most of the time. The verbs were also often to difficult as it’s, like in many books, in the past tense. 

But now a couple of years later, I’ve been practicing my French a lot. I try force myself to talk in French against my mother even when I find it hard to do so. I’ve been listening to French Music. I’ve watched several French movies (I love lots of French comedies). I’ve been taking French courses and try to read on French websites(like blogs or the news).

I think my French vocabulary has definitely expanded. But I can’t deny that it’s been hard. French is very different than my own native language (Flemish/Dutch), so it was a road with lot’s of ups and downs. But I’m determined to get there as French is an important part of my life, with my in-law family. And it’s going to be more important in the future as me and my Hubby have got plans to move to France and we want to raise our son bilingual.

But I’ve got the feeling my reading and writing skills In French have definitely improved, compared to a couple of years ago. So did I understand Le Petit Prince this time without a dictionary? I think so. If you can make sense of my review, then I guess I’ve understood it. So let’s hope that my quest for learning French is getting closer to my end goal.

So now about the book. What was it about? It’s about a little prince. You: Well duh!! Me: Yes!! I’m smart enough to translate the title, woohoo! :D Just kidding, it’s really about a little prince though. He lives on a small planet with two volcanoes and he’s the owner of a very beautiful flower. But then the rose lies to him and he decides he can’t trust her anymore. He starts traveling to multiple planets. First he stumbles upon smaller planets and on every planet there seems to be a person.

(spoiler part): a king, a vain man, a drunkard, a businessman, a lamplighter and a geographer. They are all alone and they seem to be very occupied by their jobs or occupations.

The little prince doesn’t really think much of the people he visits, excepts that it’s amusing sometimes but he doesn’t understand their need for to do what they do. The Geographer learns him that flowers don’t live forever and he starts to miss the flower he has left behind. The Geographer suggests to the Little Prince to visit Earth.

He goes to Earth and lands in the desert where he finds no people. He meets a snake there and he gets bitten, but he survives.

Eventually he finds a rose garden, but seeing this depresses him. His own rose told him that she was the only one of her kind.

He befriends a fox who learns him some valuable life lessons. After all this he realises too many people don’t see, what’s important in life. But the little prince wants to get back to his rose, but when comes home, he finds that she was eaten by sheep.

I think I understood to the plot quite well, there are still a few minor things, but otherwise this blogpost will probably get too long.

What did I think of this book: I liked it. But in children’s book I prefer happy endings.  I know I’m a big wimp, but I like happy endings. And I would have liked that the rose survived as the little prince decide he wanted to be with her. And it made me a bit sad. I know it’s stupid, but I’m a bit of a dreamer.😇

It felt it was more educational for adults, than for kids. He tries to learn us that we shouldn't cover ourselves in work, as most of us probably do, and look to what's more important in life: like people we care about, before it's to late.

I do think the writing style was very good, at times, it was very poetic. The illustrations were fun too. So I still gave this book three stars on Goodreads. 

Did you ever read a children’s book in another language? And what was your opinion on it?