59 Fun Facts About The Little Prince

On Earth, a three-petalled flower tells the little prince that men are hard to find because they lack what?

Roots: the wind blows them about, she explains, which makes life very hard for them, and she believes only six or seven exist, having once watched a caravan pass by.

The little prince arranges to return home on what occasion?

The anniversary of his landing: on that night his own planet stands right above the spot where he came down a year before, and the narrator realises the boy had been walking back to it when they met.

In The Little Prince, what did grown-ups think the narrator's first childhood drawing showed?

A hat: it was really a boa constrictor digesting an elephant, and when a second drawing of the inside fared no better, the grown-ups told him to drop art for sums and grammar.

In The Little Prince, where does the narrator's plane come down?

The Sahara desert: the author knew the setting at first hand, having been lost in the North African desert in 1935, hallucinating and close to death, and he poured the memory into the book.

What animal does the little prince ask the narrator to draw?

A sheep: after three attempts are turned down as too sickly, too horned and too old, the narrator draws a crate and says the sheep is inside, which delights the prince.

What is the name of the little prince's home asteroid?

B-612. A real asteroid found in 1993 was later named Bésixdouze, French for B-six-twelve, because its catalogue number, 46610, is B612 when written in hexadecimal.

Roughly how big is the little prince's home planet?

The size of a house. The narrator works it out when the prince laughs at the idea of tying up his new pet: at home, he says, nobody can go very far straight ahead.

Why was the astronomer who discovered the little prince's asteroid ignored at first?

He wore traditional Turkish clothing. When the astronomer gave the same talk again in 1920 in an elegant European suit, everybody accepted it, the book's jab at grown-ups who judge by appearances.

Which weekly chore does the little prince do on his volcanoes?

Sweeping. He cleans all three out like chimneys every week, even the extinct one, so that they burn gently instead of erupting, and the two active ones are handy for heating his breakfast.

Which trees does the prince constantly pull up before they can overrun his tiny planet?

Baobabs. The narrator draws a planet overrun by three of them, the fate of a lazy man who put off his weeding, and says he drew that warning with more urgency than any other picture in the book.

What kind of flower grows on the prince's asteroid and becomes the love of his life?

A rose. She coughs and exaggerates her ailments so that the prince will fuss over her, and on Earth he is crushed to find a garden of five thousand flowers just like her.

What shields the little prince's flower from wind and cold?

A glass globe and a screen. On the morning he leaves she refuses the globe, telling him the cool night air will do her good and that she has claws of her own.

The little prince's vain flower is thought to be modelled on the author's wife, from which country?

El Salvador. Consuelo Suncín was a Salvadoran writer and artist, and a memoir of their stormy 13-year marriage appeared under her name in 2000, two decades after her death.

Who lives on the first planet the little prince visits?

A king. With no subjects until the prince arrives, he gives only orders that would be obeyed anyway, such as telling the sun to set at sunset, and he hastily names the departing prince his ambassador.

What does the conceited man on the second planet tell the little prince to do for him?

Clap his hands. Each round of applause earns the prince a modest salute from the conceited man, a game he finds more fun than the first planet for about five minutes.

In The Little Prince, why does the tippler say he drinks?

To forget the shame of drinking. Pressed on what he is ashamed of, the tippler admits it is the drinking itself, then shuts himself up in silence and leaves the prince puzzled.

In The Little Prince, a day on the lamplighter's planet lasts how long?

One minute. That gives the planet 1,440 sunsets every twenty-four hours, and its lamplighter, still obeying an order from slower days, has to light and put out his lamp without a moment's rest.

Which grown-up advises the little prince to visit Earth?

The geographer. He refuses to record the prince's flower because flowers are 'ephemeral', a word that gives the prince his first pang of regret at having left her all alone.

What is the first creature the little prince meets after landing on Earth?

A snake. It offers to help the prince if he ever grows too homesick for his own planet, and at the end of the book its bite is what sends him back.

On Earth, what does the fox ask the little prince to do?

Tame him. To tame, the fox explains, means to establish ties, so that each becomes unique in all the world to the other, and one is responsible forever for what one has tamed.

According to the fox, one can only see rightly with what?

The heart. 'What is essential is invisible to the eye,' the fox says as his parting secret, and then tells the prince that the time he has wasted on his flower is what makes her so important.

In The Little Prince, a merchant on Earth sells a once-a-week pill that cures what?

Thirst. One pill a week saves fifty-three minutes of drinking, the merchant boasts, and the prince decides he would spend that time walking slowly towards a spring of fresh water.

According to the railway switchman, who are the only passengers who ever look out of the train windows?

The children. They press their noses to the glass while the grown-ups sleep or yawn, and the prince says only they know what they are looking for, which the switchman calls lucky.

According to the little prince, what makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides what?

A well. On their eighth day stranded, with the water gone, he and the narrator walk through the night and find one at daybreak, its old pulley singing as they haul up the bucket.

What does the little prince tell the narrator to look at to be reminded of his laughter?

The stars. He will be living and laughing on one of them, he says, so all of them will seem to laugh like little bells; the next morning his body is nowhere to be found.

The Little Prince is dedicated to which friend of the author, 'when he was a little boy'?

Léon Werth. Saint-Exupéry asks his young readers to forgive a dedication to a grown-up, pleading that this one is his best friend and is hungry and cold in wartime France, where the Jewish writer had taken refuge in the Jura.

How is the little prince believed to have escaped from his own planet?

With a flock of wild birds. The narrator can only say he believes the prince took advantage of their migration; that morning the boy tidied his planet and watered his flower one last time, close to tears.

Which New York institution has held the handwritten manuscript of The Little Prince since 1968?

The Morgan Library & Museum. Leaving to rejoin the war, Saint-Exupéry dropped the manuscript on a friend's hall table in a rumpled paper bag, saying it was all he had to give; the Morgan bought it from her.

In The Little Prince, grown-ups never ask what a new friend's voice sounds like because they love only what?

Numbers. About a new friend they ask only his age, his weight and what his father earns, the narrator says, which is why he gives them the asteroid's number instead of describing the prince's laugh.

The Little Prince is the most translated book in the world after which religious text?

The Bible. Translators have often carried the tale into rare and endangered languages with very few speakers, and its total is one that no other work of fiction comes near.

On a mountain on Earth, the little prince hears only his echo and decides people there lack what?

Imagination. Taking the echo for the planet's people, he complains that they only repeat whatever is said to them, unlike the flower he left at home, who always spoke first.

Which actor played the Fox in the 1974 musical film of The Little Prince?

Gene Wilder. The songs were by Lerner and Loewe, the team behind My Fair Lady: Lerner coaxed Loewe out of retirement to write the music, and it proved to be their last score together.

In the 2015 Little Prince film, who hears the tale from the old Aviator?

A schoolgirl. Director Mark Osborne, fresh from Kung Fu Panda, made a girl the hero after research showed how few of them lead animated films, and cast his own son Riley as the voice of the prince.

Who voiced the elderly Aviator in the 2015 animated film of The Little Prince?

Jeff Bridges. He was wary of yet another adaptation until director Mark Osborne opened a handmade suitcase with a mock-up of the author's manuscript hidden inside, a pitch that later won over the rest of the cast.

Saint-Exupéry and his little prince appeared on which French banknote from 1993 until the euro arrived?

The 50-franc note. To defeat forgers, lines from the book were printed on it in letters too small to read without a magnifying glass, beside the author's portrait and the prince on his planet.

Which French city's airport was renamed after Saint-Exupéry in 2000, the centenary of his birth?

Lyon. It is the city where he was born, and for the centenary it also unveiled a statue on place Bellecour of the writer seated with the little prince standing behind him, a hand on his shoulder.

Saint-Exupéry vanished on a reconnaissance flight in July 1944 flying which aircraft?

A Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Years past the age limit for such pilots, he had lobbied for months to be let back into the cockpit; pieces of the plane were raised from the sea off Marseille in 2003.

What did a fisherman haul up near Marseille in 1998 that reopened the mystery of Saint-Exupéry's death?

His silver identity bracelet. It was engraved with his name, his wife Consuelo's and his publisher's address, and two years later a diver found the remains of his plane on the seabed nearby.

Which French publisher finally issued The Little Prince in France once the German occupation was over?

Gallimard. His regular French publisher brought the tale out only after the Liberation, more than a year after its author had vanished on a wartime flight, so he never saw it in a French bookshop.

Saint-Exupéry's 1939 memoir of his flying life, mined for the little prince's desert scenes, has what English title?

Wind, Sand and Stars. It began as a heap of magazine articles and loose pages, the story of his 1935 crash among them, which his American translator helped him stitch into a single book.

Which of Saint-Exupéry's novels won France's prix Femina in 1931?

Night Flight. Written while he ran an airmail line in South America, it became a best-seller that Hollywood filmed with Clark Gable, and Guerlain borrowed its French title, Vol de nuit, for a perfume.

Researchers have argued the menacing trees threatening the little prince's planet represent what?

Nazism. He drew them as an exile from occupied France who was urging America to join the war, and one early sketch shows the tiny planet locked in the tree's death-grasp.

The fox tells the little prince that which sight will always remind him of the boy's golden hair?

Wheat fields. A fox eats no bread, so wheat used to mean nothing to him; now its colour will bring the prince to mind, and he says he will love the sound of the wind in it.

Because of his golden curls, what did friends and family call the author as a boy?

The prince's own blond hair is thought to come partly from that childhood self and partly from a curly-haired eight-year-old he met in Quebec.

Which filmmaker took an option on The Little Prince, then dropped the idea when Walt Disney would not help?

Orson Welles. He read the tale aloud to his business partner at four in the morning to get the rights secured and began a script, hoping to mix in animation, but he could not enlist Disney.

P. L. Travers, one of the first reviewers to praise The Little Prince, created which children's classic?

Mary Poppins. Travers wrote that the book would shine on children 'with a sidewise gleam', striking somewhere other than the mind and glowing there until they were old enough to understand it.

Which grown-up does the little prince say is the only one he could have made his friend?

The lamplighter. He alone thinks of something besides himself, the prince decides, and so does not seem ridiculous; the trouble is that his planet has no room for two.

Why is International Little Prince Day held every year on June 29?

It is the author's birthday. Saint-Exupéry was born on 29 June 1900 and vanished on a wartime flight a month after turning 44, before the book had even been published in France.

After Saint-Exupéry's own 1935 crash, who found him and his mechanic as they were dying of thirst?

A Bedouin on a camel. Search planes were looking in the wrong place, and after days of walking the two men were hallucinating when the rider appeared and gave them water.

Saint-Exupéry's 1935 crash came during an attempt on the speed record from Paris to which Asian city?

Saigon. Chasing a 150,000-franc prize, he left his radio behind so that he could carry more fuel, and flew into the ground in the dark some nineteen hours out of Paris.

El principito, the first Spanish edition of The Little Prince, appeared in 1951 in which country?

Argentina. Emecé of Buenos Aires published Bonifacio del Carril's translation in September 1951, ahead of Mexico in 1956 and of Spain, which waited until the 1960s; the author had once run the airmail from that city.

What did Saint-Exupéry do to friends at night while writing The Little Prince?

Read them pages by phone. He wrote through the night on coffee and cigarettes, cutting a draft of some 30,000 words to about half that, and wanted a verdict on each passage at once.

Which fellow aviator hosted Saint-Exupéry at his Long Island home in August 1939?

Charles Lindbergh. His wife Anne had to interpret, as neither flyer spoke the other's language, and the two disagreed about the coming war: the host wanted America kept out, his guest wanted it in.

The little prince's reassurance that his body is only an empty shell recalls whose deathbed words?

The author's younger brother. François, dying at fifteen, told Antoine not to worry, that he could not help it, it was only his body, and then made a will leaving him his bicycle and his rifle.

Which animals does the little prince's proud flower say she is ready to face?

Tigers. There are none on his planet, the prince points out, and they do not eat weeds anyway; what she truly dreads, she then admits, is a draught.

In The Little Prince, the fox says that men hunt and also raise which animals?

Chickens. The fox hunts them and men hunt him; told that the prince's planet has no hunters he brightens, then learns that it has no chickens either and sighs that nothing is perfect.

On his tiny planet, how can the little prince watch one sunset after another?

By moving his chair a few steps. The planet is so small that dusk is always close by, and he once watched the sun go down more than forty times in a day, saying one loves sunsets when one is very sad.

In The Little Prince, why does the geographer know nothing about his own planet?

He has no explorers. A geographer is far too important to go loafing about, he says: he stays at his desk and writes down what travellers report, once their moral character has been looked into.

By November 2024, into about how many languages and dialects had The Little Prince been translated?

600. The total had doubled since 2017, and the 600th version, presented in Panama in June 2024, was made in Dulegaya, the language of the Guna people, for use in their schools and libraries.