The little prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery

The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince;, first published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of the French aristocrat writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944, Mort pour la France).

The novella is both the most read and most translated book in the French language, and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France. Translated into more than 250 languages and dialects, selling over a million copies per year with sales totaling over 200 million copies worldwide, it has become one of the best-selling books ever published.

Saint-Exupéry, a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and a reserve military pilot at the start of the Second World War, wrote and illustrated the manuscript while exiled in the United States after the Fall of France. He had traveled there on a personal mission to convince its government to quickly enter the war against Nazi Germany. In the midst of personal upheavals and failing health he produced almost half of the writings he would be remembered for, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love and loss, in the form of a young prince fallen to Earth.

From the book

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called
True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa
constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without
chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the
six months that they need for digestion.”
I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some
work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing
Number One. It looked like this:
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the
drawing frightened them.
But they answered: “Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a
hat?”
My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor
digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it,
I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the
grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My
Drawing Number Two looked like this:

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