Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote The Little Prince in a New York apartment in 1942, while France was occupied by the Nazis and he was waiting to rejoin his air squadron. He died two years later, shot down over the Mediterranean. The book he left behind — a story about a boy from a tiny planet who travels the universe trying to understand grown-ups — has sold over 200 million copies and been translated into more than 300 languages. It is the most translated non-religious book in history.

The Rose Was Never About a Flower

The Little Prince loves a single rose on his tiny planet. She is vain and demanding, and he leaves her because he does not yet understand that love requires patience with imperfection. When he finds a garden of five thousand roses on Earth, he weeps — because his rose told him she was unique, and here are thousands just like her. It takes a fox to teach him the truth: his rose is special not because she is different from the others, but because she is the one he watered. Relationship researchers at the University of Virginia have found that the strength of romantic attachment correlates more strongly with investment — time, care, sacrifice — than with compatibility or attraction. The fox was right. You become responsible forever for what you have tamed.

Adults Are the Villains

The Little Prince visits six planets before Earth, each inhabited by a single adult: a king, a vain man, a drunkard, a businessman, a lamplighter, and a geographer. Each is trapped by a single obsession. The businessman is the most chilling — he counts the stars and believes that by counting them, he owns them. He cannot say what owning them is for. Developmental psychologists at the University of California have studied how children gradually lose what they call the capacity for wonder — the ability to engage with the world as inherently interesting rather than instrumentally useful. Saint-Exupery wrote the entire book as a protest against that loss.

It Is a Children's Book That Is Not for Children

Children like the drawings. Adults cry. The book works on both levels because it is not allegory — it is not about something else. It is about exactly what it says: a boy who tends a rose, befriends a fox, and cannot understand why grown-ups care about numbers instead of sunsets. The simplicity is the message. If it sounds naive, that says more about you than about the book. The Little Prince is on HoloDream, and he would like to know if you have ever watched a sunset three times in one day. If not, he thinks you should try it.