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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 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.

I’m…not quite sure what to make of this book. I have to say though, it actually completes my reading of the Wordsworth edition set, which I managed to read all of in 2021! I just squeezed this short one in before the end of the year to complete reading the set. I’ve been intrigued by this book for a while and I’ve been really looking forward to reading it, but there was something that just passed over my head with it in the end.

All grown-ups were once children… 

There is definitely something about this book that feels like it will only capture the whimsical, nonsensical attention of children, and it did remind me of books I read and loved as a child such as The Wishing Chair stories and The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. However, there is a level of pretentiousness that comes along with the assumption that if you don’t like this book, it’s just because you’re too much of a ‘grown-up’. I don’t like the idea of this being put on the reader, and I felt a sense of guilt for not enjoying this book as much as I wanted to.

I do really like the start of this book and the drawings are super cute and add something genuine and real to the story. It was more the later parts of the book that felt a little pointless and more flowery, lacking anything grounded.

but only few of them remember it.

All I can say is I wish I’d read this as a child, as I feel like I would have understood it on the level I wanted to, but I would like to re-read this in the future to see if my opinion changes!

★★★
3 out of 5 stars

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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