60 Fun Facts About The Little Prince

In which year was The Little Prince first published?

It came out in New York in both English and French; France did not get its own edition until after the Liberation, because Vichy had banned the author's works.

In which country was the book first published?

The author was living in exile in New York at the time, trying to persuade America to enter the war against Nazi Germany.

What did grown-ups think the narrator's first childhood drawing depicted?

It was really a boa constrictor digesting an elephant; his second drawing showed the inside to prove it, and he was told to take up something practical.

Where does the narrator's plane crash?

The author really did crash there in 1935 while chasing an air-race speed record, and nearly died of thirst before help arrived.

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

After three rejected attempts the narrator draws a crate and says the animal is inside, which delights the prince.

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

A real asteroid discovered in 1993 was later named 46610 Bésixdouze, because 46610 written in hexadecimal is B612.

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

It has three tiny volcanoes and enough soil for baobab seedlings to be a constant threat.

Why was the astronomer who discovered the prince's asteroid ignored when he first presented his findings?

When he repeated the talk in a European suit, the same findings were accepted, a jab at grown-ups who judge by appearances.

How many volcanoes does the prince's asteroid have?

Two are active and one is dormant; the prince cleans them out like chimneys, and they may echo the three volcanoes the author saw while recovering from a crash in Central America.

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

Some researchers read the grasping trees as a political allegory for a menace threatening to swallow the world in 1942.

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

She coughs and exaggerates her ailments so the prince will fuss over her; on Earth he is crushed to find a whole garden of flowers just like her.

What does the prince build to shelter his flower from the wind and cold?

When he leaves, she refuses the globe and says she can look after herself.

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

Consuelo Suncin was a once-divorced, once-widowed writer and artist whom he married at Grasse in 1931.

How many other planets does the prince visit before reaching Earth?

Each is home to a single grown-up, from a king with no subjects to a lamplighter with no time to sleep.

What does the businessman on his own planet spend all day counting?

He believes that by counting and cataloguing them he owns them, an idea the prince finds useless.

Why does the tippler say he drinks?

The circular logic is one of the book's sharpest jokes about grown-ups.

The lamplighter's planet spins so fast that how many sunsets does it have each day?

A full day there lasts one minute; the prince, who loves sunsets, says it is the planet he would most like to have stayed on.

Which grown-up persuades the prince to visit Earth next?

He knows nothing about his own planet because he only writes down what explorers report, and none ever come.

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

It tells him it has the power to send him home whenever he wishes, which is exactly what happens at the end.

Which animal asks the prince to tame it and teaches him what makes his flower unique?

Its parting secret is that what is essential is invisible to the eye; the author rewrote that line some fifteen times.

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

The phrase is believed to have been suggested by the author's close New York friend Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt, who is also thought to be the model for the fox.

The merchant sells a pill that removes the need to drink; how many minutes a week does it save?

The prince says he would spend the 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 adults, he says, rush from place to place never satisfied and never sure what they are chasing.

How many days after the crash do the narrator and the prince finally find a well?

The prince insists that 'somewhere in the desert there is a well', and at dawn the narrator finds it.

What does the prince tell the narrator to look at whenever he wants to think of the prince's laughter?

He says it will seem as if all of them are laughing; the next morning the narrator cannot find his body.

To whom is the book dedicated?

He was a Jewish anarchist writer, 22 years older than the author, sitting out the war cold and hungry in the Jura; the dedication is corrected to him 'when he was a little boy'.

In which US state was most of the book written and illustrated in 1942?

The author worked mostly at Bevin House, a 22-room mansion on Long Island; he had asked for a hut and complained he had been given the Palace of Versailles.

Which New York institution has held the original handwritten manuscript since 1968?

It bought the 140-page draft from the author's friend Silvia Hamilton; it is the only complete handwritten draft known to survive.

Roughly how many copies has The Little Prince sold worldwide?

It still sells almost two million copies a year and has been turned into ballets, operas, films and radio plays.

The Little Prince is the second most translated book ever published; which is the only work ahead of it?

By November 2024 it existed in 600 languages and dialects, including Scots, Irish and Shetlandic.

Who produced the first English translation in 1943, admired for its poetry despite its errors?

At least seven later English translations exist, including one by War Horse author Michael Morpurgo in 2018.

Which actor played the Fox in the 1974 American musical film?

Bob Fosse played the Snake and choreographed his own dance number.

Which director, previously of Kung Fu Panda, made the 2015 animated film?

He turned the film's hero into a little girl after research on the gender gap in animated films, and cast his own son Riley as the prince.

Who voiced the elderly Aviator in the 2015 animated film?

The director said he was the first and only choice, and drove to Bridges's home in Santa Barbara to pitch him in person.

The author and his drawings appeared on which French banknote from 1993 until the euro arrived?

Micro-printed text from the book was one of the note's anti-counterfeiting features.

Which French city's airport was renamed after the author on the centenary of his birth in 2000?

It is his birthplace; the city's TGV station was renamed too, and a statue there shows him seated with the little prince standing behind him.

The author vanished on a reconnaissance flight in July 1944 flying which aircraft?

He was past the maximum age for a war pilot; wreckage was finally found off Marseille in 2000, but the cause of the crash is still unknown.

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

It bore his name, his wife's and his American publisher's, and was hooked to a scrap of what was probably his flight suit.

Which French publisher finally issued the book in France once the German occupation ended?

Before that, the only new printings of his work in France were secret runs, like the 1,000 underground copies of his war memoir made in Lyon in 1943.

The author's 1939 memoir of his flying life, drawn on for the desert scenes, has what English title?

Its French title, Terre des hommes, became the central theme of Expo 67 in Montreal.

Which of the author's novels won the prix Femina in 1931?

It drew on his time running an airmail airline in South America and was filmed twice.

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

The author, an exile from occupied France, wrote the book in 1942 while trying to rally America to the war.

What six-letter G-word do experts think an 'ambassador of the human spirit' hunted in draft pages found in 2012?

The cut scene would have made the fable's politics far more explicit.

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.

How long did the book last on the New York Times bestseller list when it first came out?

His earlier memoir of his flying life had stayed on the list for nearly five months.

Which Mary Poppins author warmly reviewed the book, promising it would strike young readers 'with a sidewise gleam'?

Travers predicted it would glow in young readers until they were old enough to understand it.

What pet is believed to have been the model for the drawing of the prince's sheep?

The dog, Mocha, belonged to the author's friend Silvia Hamilton; her boxer Hannibal may have posed for the fox and the tiger.

Since 2020, International Little Prince Day is held on June 29. Why that date?

He was born on 29 June 1900 into an aristocratic Catholic family that traced its lineage back centuries.

After the author's real 1935 desert crash, who found him and his navigator on the fourth day?

He and André Prévot had survived on a few grapes, an orange, a thermos of coffee and some wine, and were hallucinating by the time help came.

The author's 1935 crash came during an attempt on the speed record between Paris and which city?

The prize was 150,000 francs; the Caudron Simoun came down near the Wadi Natrun, close to the Nile Delta.

The first Spanish edition, El principito, appeared in 1951 in which country?

The author had lived in Buenos Aires in 1929-31 as director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline.

Roughly how long was the author's working manuscript before he cut it down to the finished book?

He trimmed it to less than half, sometimes telephoning friends at 2 a.m. to read them new passages.

Which fellow aviator's golden-haired son, met on Long Island in 1939, may have inspired the prince?

The boy was Land Morrow Lindbergh; the author stayed overnight at the family's home.

The prince's reassurance that his body is only an empty shell echoes the deathbed words of whom?

François told him: 'Don't worry. I'm all right. I can't help it. It's my body.'

Which New York publisher brought out The Little Prince in both English and French in April 1943?

Elizabeth Reynal, the publisher's French wife, had urged the stressed author to try a children's book; the Vichy regime had banned his works in France.

Which Long Island mansion overlooking the Sound is where most of the book was written in 1942?

The 22-room house in Asharoken replaced a sweltering Central Park South penthouse; its sunsets inspired the planet with 43 sunsets a day.

Which New York friend of the author is believed to be the model for the fox?

Saint-Exupéry gave her his working manuscript before leaving to rejoin the Free French Air Force; the Morgan Library bought it from her in 1968.

How many sunsets a day does the prince enjoy on his tiny planet in the published text?

All that is needed to watch another is to 'move your chair a few steps', a detail drawn from the author's own sunset-gazing on Long Island.

What is the number of the asteroid named Bésixdouze in honour of the prince's home?

The number 46610 becomes B612 in hexadecimal; asteroid 2578 Saint-Exupéry honours the author himself.

Into how many languages and dialects had the book been translated by November 2024?

Versions include Sardinian, Esperanto, Klingon, the Congolese language Alur and Braille editions.