Antoine de St Exupéry - The Little Prince

Title: The Little Prince
Original title: Le Petit Prince
Author: Antoine de St Exupéry
Pub. year: 1943
Pages: 96
Editor: Mariner Books

Summary: The Little Prince is a fantasy book about a pilot, stranded in the Sahara, who meets a small boy from another planet. The boy, who refers to himself as a prince, is on a quest for knowledge. The little prince asks questions of the pilot and tells the pilot of life on his own very small planet.

I guess if you know only one French book, it's this one. And that's probably because it's the most translated French book ever. I'd say it totally deserves it. It's one of my favorite since the first time I read it, 13 years ago (because they were many others).



As you can see, it's a very short book, with a lot of very nice pictures inside. So you can easily guess that it won't take long to read it. But it doesn't leave you unchanged. Because if it seems like a children book, a simply nice story, it's mostly a grown up book about remembering what it's like to be a child and what adulthood does to us. At least, that's part of what it is. Almost each time I read this book between my 11yo and now, I discover something else. Maybe because I was growing up, but mainly because you change all the time, you learn, you live and that gives you a different way of seeing the world.

It has this naive way of showing you stuff that you tend to forget about childhood, about relationships, about yourself. It's funny, it's poetic, sometimes a bit sad and I don't think it's possible to close this book without feeling a little bit different. But that's maybe just cheesy me loving this book.

I love how it makes you feel that imagination and make-beliefs games are the best thing ever, and I love how it is a constant reminder that even if I'm kind of an adult now, I don't want to forget what it's like to be a child.

So, all I can say if you haven't read it yet is GO READ IT NOW!

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Timothée de Fombelle - Toby Alone

Title: Toby Alone (Tobie Lolness, book 1)
Original title: La Vie suspendue (Tobie Lolness, tome 1)
Author: Timothée de Fombelle
Pub. year: 2007
Pages: 400
Editor: Walker

Summary: Toby Lolness is just one and a half millimetres tall, and he’s the most wanted person in his world, the great oak Tree. When Toby’s father makes a ground-breaking discovery, tapping into the very heart of the Tree’s energy, he also realises that exploiting it could do permanent damage to their world. Refusing to reveal the secret of his invention to an enraged community, the family is exiled. But one man is determined to get hold of the forbidden knowledge ... and his plan is to destroy the Tree. Now Toby's parents have been imprisoned and sentenced to death. Only Toby has managed to escape, but for how long?

Toby Lolness is a two-parts saga that takes very little time to read. I've read each of these books in a few days only, maybe less.

This first book introduces us Toby, a 13 years old boy, who lives in the Tree. But the Tree is vast and a lot of tiny people live inside. There's the Treetop, the Lower Branches; the wise and kind people, the evil destructive people who are destroying the tree; and Toby, running for his life, after his parents have been imprisoned. Toby, trying to guess who is on his side, who is trying to catch him, and how to survive alone in the Tree, with almost everybody looking for him from the top to the roots. Luckily, he is not exactly alone all the way and he is full of resources!

Toby Lolness is a story about family, ecology, friendship, love, death, acceptance and so much more. But don't make the mistake to think that it's only a children book, for you can appreciate it even as grown-up. It's not patronizing, as some might be. It's just a story of a young teenager forced to leave his home, going even as far as the Ground Beyond, trying to live his life and saving his family while staying optimistic and hopeful.

After reading this book, you'll probably want to read the sequel (Toby and the Secrets of the Tree), so maybe you should aquire the two in one go. Like I said, it's a really fast reading so you can easily read them one after the other.

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Madeleine L’Engle - A Wrinkle in Time

Title: A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time, book 1)
Author: Madeleine L’Engle
Pub. year: 1962
Pages: 232
Editor: Square Fish

Summary: Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventure - one that will threaten their lives and our universe.

An American friend of mine told me about that book a while ago, saying that it was rather famous in the USA. Never heard of it before, so I bought it to see what it was about and maybe promote it in France at the same time.

The good thing about not knowing anything about a story is that you read it without any prejudice. You just take it as it comes, nothing comes spoiling your reading. And that’s how I discovered the story of these children, the magic it contains, the strange characters they meet. I think it’s a perfect adventure to read to kids, but it doesn’t keep me from liking it (since anyway I like to feel a bit like a child sometimes, especially when I read).

This book introduce us Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin, three young children who found themselves trapped in some wrinkle in space and time, looking for their father vanished years ago.

Despite the strangeness of some things (like Charles Wallace behaviour for a kid of his age), I found the stoy well directed with some obvious truth but also a lot of stuff that you don't see often in youth litterature. For a book this old, it's pretty amazing.

This book is the first of a series of five, all about the O’Keefe and Murray families, so you'll probably hear of it again around here sooner or later.

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