The little prince

When he was 6, Antoine saw a picture in a book about primeval forests: it showed a boa constrictor swallowing a large animal. His imagination took flight, and he imagined the sequel to the boa's adventure. But when he proudly showed his drawing to a grown-up and asked if it scared him, the grown-up told him that there was nothing scary about a hat. The problem was that what he had wanted to draw was a boa digesting an elephant. Discouraged by the comments of the grown-ups, Antoine stopped drawing, and he also stopped having friends, until...

One day, when he was older and working as a pilot, his plane had engine problems and Antoine had to land in the middle of the Sahara Desert. He immediately set to work to repair his plane and leave, before his food and water supplies ran out. While he was working, he heard a little voice asking him: “Please, can you draw me a sheep?" It was the voice of a beautiful blond boy who had mysteriously and unpredictably appeared before him in the desert.

Because the boy kept on asking him to draw a sheep, the pilot took a piece of paper and a pencil, and drew a sheep three times. But none of the drawings pleased the child. So Antoine drew a box with three holes. “Your sheep is inside this box” he said to the child. And the little boy looked satisfied. That's how his friendship with the little prince began.

In the days that followed, listening to him, the pilot discovered that the child was a prince from a distant planet. A planet so small that the sheep would not even have needed a rope to stop it escaping.

As he talked to the boy, the pilot discovered that the prince's planet was probably asteroid B612, which had been sighted only once by a Turkish astronomer. Grown-ups love numbers so much that sometimes they even use them to name asteroids.

Every day the pilot discovered something new about the little prince and his planet. He learned that on the small planets in the universe many herbs grow, some of which are tiny and therefore harmless. Others are very dangerous and must be ripped out, because they become huge trees and might destroy the planet. One of these dangerous trees is the baobab. Every morning the little prince devoted himself to uprooting the dangerous, newly-sprouted baobab shoots. This activity was essential! The little prince asked the pilot to draw a nice picture, one that would teach everyone how important it is to get rid of dangerous baobab shoots.