"What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye"

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince (2015)

When I was very young, my mom had placed a series of book collections on the headboard of my bed before I learned how to read or developed any interest in books. Among the titles, nestled between C.S. Lewis' Narnia series and J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, was a rather thin book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that showed a young boy standing on the edge of a tiny planet. I would pick up the book and look at the pictures, laugh at the boa constrictor "hat" eating the elephant, skim through the pictures of the sheep, and stare intently at the pictures of the baobabs. I never read through the first few chapters because someone had told me how the book ended and I found the ending to be quite sad.

I revisited the book many years later as a grown-up and this time spent more attention to the different individuals the little prince met along his trip through the asteroids. I saw the King, the Conceited Man, the Business man, the Lamp Lighter, and the Geographer as the dangerous personality types that adults exhibit. The story taught me to embrace the innocence of childhood and to be weary of the mundane, routine tasks of adulthood.

My favorite character in the book was an ordinary fox that the Little Prince encounters when he arrives on Earth. The relationship between the prince and the fox is contingent on whether the prince is able to tame him. The fox told the Little Prince, "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." Eventually, the Little Prince tames the fox, which makes saying goodbye more difficult. The fox embodied what many of us are searching for–someone or something to tame us and to tame in return.

It goes without saying that I was extremely elated when I heard that a full-length animated film of the book was being made in 2014. I had been waiting for the US release of the latest incarnation of The Little Prince for nearly two years and was able to watch it earlier last week. The film stays true to the original source while enveloping it inside a story about a very serious little girl that already acts like an adult. The film is very enjoyable to watch and I was pleased with the end result.

MILESTONE



The KAMics has reached 1,625 pages on Wednesday, August 10th! Wow!

Link: http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_KAMics/



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