The little prince returns
The Little Prince Returns (Original title: Le petit prince retrouvé ) is a French children's book by Jean-Pierre Davidts with illustrations by Marie-Claude Favreau . It was first published in 1997, the German translation by Brigitte Große in 1998. It is a sequel to The Little Prince and a homage to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry .
action
Sitting in his armchair, the author Davidts first explains that - in contrast to Saint-Exupéry - he traveled a lot in his life. He was particularly fond of visiting places that stand out due to their exotic names and seem rather unknown as travel destinations. After a long stay in his homeland, Davidts decides to travel again. This time he wants to go to the city of Kyaukpyu on the island of Ramree. He writes about this "nice spot" on the map:
"If I were to make only one trip in my short life, I told myself, if there was one place that could tear me out of my chair, it would be this."
Since he has got used to the comfort of his armchair for a long time, he decides to forego any luxury for this trip and goes to the port with the hope of being able to hire a freighter. After being turned away by seafarers several times, he was finally lucky and allowed to travel on the freighter SKIPSKJELEN. The captain is a typical fur seal with whom the Davidts fraternize quickly. A huge storm breaks out on the high seas. On deck, Davidts slip on the floor and are washed overboard by a wave. In the water he is saved by a piece of driftwood that he can hold on to.
As a shipwrecked man, Davidts ends up on a small island. When he wakes up on the beach, the little prince stands in front of him with a box and straightforwardly confronts him with the question of whether he is a tiger hunter. Davidt denies this and asks why he wants to kill a tiger, whereupon the little prince says that he does not want to kill it, but rather hunt it. Then the little prince tells him about his planet, where baobabs sprout from the ground. If he didn't have his sheep, the plants would overgrow the planet. One day a running circus tiger came to his planet and threatened to eat the sheep. The tiger broke a thorn of his rose, which the little prince is looking after, with his claw.
“My rose has lost a thorn. She didn't say anything, but I know very well that it hurt her. I saw a tear drop from one of its leaves. "
Following the encounter with the tiger, the little prince sets off with his sheep on a journey towards earth in the hope of finding a tiger hunter. On the way he meets some surprising personalities on other planets. First he meets a ragged man with shaggy hair, a disheveled beard and round glasses. He pays very strict attention to the ecosystem of his planet. Later the little prince meets an old weaver who wants to sell unnecessary things and a man dressed in green who hates everything that is red and, to the prince's horror, crushes a red flower. The prince also meets a dear girl who he has to leave again because he doesn't want to keep the rose waiting long on his home planet. She would like it to stay, since her planet has many beautiful flowers, but the prince is worried.
"This is something else. No flower is like mine. She is haughty and daring, sometimes quite vain, but it is precisely her mistakes that make her something very special to me. Besides, she feels completely lost so alone, even if she would never admit it. "
Eventually the little prince arrives on earth, where he continues to search for a tiger hunter. In the dense jungle, he first meets a boa. This is so thick in the middle of her body, as if she had swallowed an elephant.
After the little prince tells Davidts about the trip, they both spend their time on the island collecting fruit and watching the sunset from the beach every day. Suddenly the prince announces that he has to go back to his planet because he misses the rose. When Davidts wakes up the next day, the prince has disappeared. A short time later the SKIPSKJELEN appears and the captain happily takes Davidts on board. Davidts tells him about the little prince and the captain believes him without reservation. After this adventure, the destination is no longer Kyaukpyu, but the home port.
In the closing words, Davidts turns to Saint-Exupéry again and explains to him that shortly before saying goodbye to the little prince he has taken his sheep and is taking good care of it.
shape
The author, who only tells from a first-person perspective in this work, hardly addresses the reader himself. Although the cover says that the book is for all the little princes on earth, only Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is addressed. That's because Saint-Exupery wrote in his classic The Little Prince :
“If a child comes up to you, if it laughs, if it has golden hair, if it doesn't answer when you ask it, then you will probably guess who it is. Then be so good and don't let me continue to be so sad: write me quickly when he is back ... "
The book looks like a long letter to "dear Mr. Saint-Exupéry".
Classification in the work of the author
Davidts had previously published ten children's books. In 1995 he was awarded the Prix Desjardins for youth literature . The Little Prince Returns has been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, Korean, Russian, Croatian, Spanish and Hungarian.
expenditure
French first edition:
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Le petit prince retrouvé. Les Intouchables, Montréal 1997, ISBN 2-921775-38-7 .
- German translation: The little prince returns. Rotbuch, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-434-54501-8 .