News

Our beloved Little Prince, a born globe-trotter, is forever travelling from planet to planet and country to country, and tomorrow he is off to China! As part of the « Festival Croisements », a series of four readings of Le Petit Prince in French and Chinese is being organised by Alliance Française centres in four major Chinese cities: Beijing, Xian, Wuhan and Shanghai.

On stage, two actors: from France, Anny Romand and from China, James Pax. They will read Le Petit Prince, in both languages, naturally: each will respond to the other. Festival Croisements/Jiaoliu is a festival of cultural encounters in which France and China compare and combine traditions and modern ideas, affinities and differences to serve popular creations open to the world. Building on the years of Franco-Chinese cross-cultural cooperation, the festival offers 100 shows and exhibitions centred on the visual arts, theatre, circus, dance and music, to be staged in 10 cities around China.

Find out more: Festival Croisements

The Swiss Association of the Friends of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is organising an afternoon tea and show on 6 June in Geneva, with a one-off performance of Le Petit Prince, directed by Virgil Tanase.

All proceeds from the performance will go to the Association of the Friends of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on behalf of a school and computer project in Kinshasa. The aim of the project is to set up a Saint-Exupéry Computer Centre for the schoolchildren and students of Kinshasa. The centre will help young people learn computer skills that will stand them in good stead when looking for employment.

Wednesday 6 June, from 5.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m. at the Salle Centrale Madeleine
10 rue de la Madeleine, Geneva.

Bookings:
Migros Genève – Service Culturel
7 rue du Prince
1204 Genève

Let\’s find out more about a travelling exhibition in the land of the rising sun, on the subject of The Little Prince and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry…

The exhibition was unveiled for the first time on 24 April in the Ginza Matsuya department stores in Tokyo. It presented the Japanese with an unusual view of The Little Prince in the form of 15 giant animated books representing the work\’s main themes and revealing some of its secrets.

Great news for the friends of The Little Prince from the land of the rising sun: one of the original illustrations for the world-famous book has come to light!
In 1994, Minoru Shibuya, a museum curator from Japan, purchased a signed drawing at a book fair; the drawing showed the Businessman\’s planet visited by The Little Prince on his travels. Although he believed that the drawing was indeed by the hand of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Mr. Shibuya also thought it was nothing more than a draft. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was known for drawing whenever and wherever he could, even on restaurant table-cloths. Indeed, that is precisely why there are so many sketches all over the world, points out François d’Agay, the writer\’s nephew. « Seeing it gives me a great deal of pleasure. I am much moved to see a drawing by Saint-Exupéry, » he said. The mystery as to how the drawing came to be in Japan remained unsolved, however.
The drawing was recently examined by experts and identified as very probably being one of the drawings used by the US publisher Reynal & Hitchcock for the very first edition of The Little Prince in 1943. If this is really the case, it represents an incredible find, since the original drawings for The Little Prince were believed lost after the death of the author and aviator. It would be only the fourth drawing discovered to date! The news was released in Tokyo, at a press conference attended by François d’Agay.

On 27 March at the 27 Paris Book Fair, the L’Express-Lire group officially presented a cheque for 28,000 euros to the voluntary group Dessine-moi un Mouton which works with families affected by AIDS. The cheque represents the proceeds of sales of a special issue of Lire magazine, devoted entirely to The Little Prince, to mark the 60^th anniversary of its publication in France. For every copy sold, 50 centimes was donated to the association.
For the past 17 years, Dessine-moi un Mouton has been offering social and psychological support to families affected by AIDS. A team of experts helps families try and keep life on an even keel for children and parents alike, to re-establish family ties, to be part of mainstream society despite the disease, as well as helping keep track of their medical follow-up. Since 1990, the group has reached out and provided support to over 1,000 families.

Find out more: www.dessinemoiunmouton.org

On 18 December, the people of Toulouse paid tribute to Saint-Exupéry at the Cité de l’Espace (Space City). A moment of commemoration that united the entire aerospace family based in Toulouse for a magnificent evening, orchestrated by Martine Saint-Martin, Midi-Pyrénées representative of the Espace Saint-Exupéry: « We wanted to pay special tribute on the occasion of the 60^th anniversary of the publication of Le Petit Princei n France, but even more especially on the 80^th anniversary of the author’s first visit to Toulouse-Montaudran where he began his career with Latécoère, on 14 October 1926. »
The evening got under way in the Imax theatre Astralia attraction in Space City, with a moving introduction from Mr. François d’Agay, nephew of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
This was followed by a splendid concert, Clair de Terre (Earthlight), created by Jean-Noël Sarrail, which visits the main themes of The Little Prince, and which was beautifully interpreted by the pupils of the Lavaur, Gratentour, Reynerie and Graulhet middle schools.
The evening also saw the official opening of a very special exhibition on Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince entitled A Prince among the Stars, in the presence of François and Olivier d’Agay, the nephew and great-nephew of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The exhibition includes original drawings by Saint-Exupéry, but also a collection of books, flight instrument and, most impressively, some very fine sculptures of the writer-pilot and The Little Prince, the work of P. Jouffroy and Madeleine Tezenas du Montcel, official Air & Space painter.

Find out more: http://www.cite-espace.com/ 

A lecture on the subject of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince will be held on Wednesday 15 November at the Espace Bernanos, Paris 9^e.
The lecture will be given by Mr. Howard Scherry, a leading specialist on Saint-Exupéry\’s life in the USA, who has flown over from New York for the occasion. He is also the President and Founder of Remembering Saint-Exupéry, an organisation which exists to promote the memory and the works of the writer and aviator in the United States.

Wednesday 15 November, 6.00 p.m., Espace Georges Bernanos
4, rue du Havre – 75009 Paris
Tél. 01 45 26 65 26
Fax 01 45 26 65 25

The celebrations began on 13 January 2006 at the Théâtre Michel (Paris). Friends of The Little Prince celebrated his birthday in fitting style. Nikolaus Schapfl\’s opera was performed in its full-stage version before an audience of 2,500 spectators.

Lire magazine published a special issue devoted to The Little Prince, an exhaustive document on the tale and its author. L’Express also ran a full-length feature on The Little Prince which included a free copy of the reading recorded by Gérard Philipe (1954).

Gallimard, the book\’s French publisher, offered its readers a collection of the author\’s drawings: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Aquarelles, pastels, plumes, crayons. Also as part of the 60^th anniversary celebrations, the book Il était une fois… Le Petit Prince (Once Upon a Time there was… The Little Prince) is an anthology compiled by Alban Cerisier including an analysis of the work and previously unpublished accounts and critical reviews. A limited edition and a CD read by Bernard Giraudeau were produced for the occasion.

To immortalise the 60^th anniversary, a statue of The Little Prince was unveiled at his birthplace in Northport (Long Island, USA) on 16 September 2006.

Happy birthday, young man!

Find out more: http://www.60anslepetitprince.com

Meet Michael Pätel, one of most avid collectors of The Little Prince in the world.
It was in Germany, in Fränkisch-Crumbach, a small town in the Odenwald, that we met Dr. Michael Pätel, a friend of The Little Prince. Michael Pätel loves to travel, and six years ago, while he was on a trip – to Mexico, as it happens – he was given a copy of The Little Prince in Spanish. Happy re-discovery! On returning home, it occurred to him to look for the same story in other languages. He found a copy in Russian, another in Greek, and over the course of time (and not a few trips) he gradually started to build up what is now a rich collection. « Most collectors stop once they have a copy in every language, » he explains. Michael Pätel, however, is looking to collect a copy of each edition. As a result, he has 330 copies of The Little Prince in Spanish, for example.
Over 1,500 copies of The Little Prince from all over the world are now lined up like one big, happy family in his office, arranged by language and by country. Dr. Pätel now shares his collection with others via a website which he regularly updates with his latest acquisitions.
Michael Pätel talks about his passion for The Little Prince in an interview, which you can watch here: watch the interview (in French).

In the summer of 1942, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry moved to Northport, a little village on Long Island not far from New York, to a mansion by the name of the Bevin House, and it was here that he wrote The Little Prince. A sculpture of the Little Prince is to be unveiled here shortly. Saint-Exupéry was looking for a quiet place in the country where he could work in peace, but close enough to New York for him to stay in touch with his business affairs. He had been living in the USA for over 18 months, having moved here after demobilisation, in common with many French intellectuals. He was already highly popular and had enjoyed some success, particularly with the publication of Flight to Arras (Pilote de Guerre). One day, his US publisher saw him sketching an unusual little character. He managed to convince Saint-Exupéry to write a children\’s story to be published in time for Christmas 1942. And it was in Northport that Saint-Exupéry found the time to write his tale and draw the illustrations, although The Little Prince was not actually published until April 1943.

In 2004, the Northport-East Northport Public Library celebrated its 90^th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the library was extended and a garden laid out for readers\’ enjoyment. Next September, a bronze statue of The Little Prince is to be unveiled on the terrace, a tribute from the community of Northport to the character of universal appeal who was born here. The project was the idea of Yvette O’Brien, a French teacher who has lived in Northport for 35 years. Mrs. O\’Brien thought the Northport library garden would be the ideal setting for the sculpture, which will commemorate for all time the historic moment of The Little Prince\’s creation.