If you were an elementary school student in the 1970s, your school library probably contained a copy of The Little Prince. Written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a French nobleman, pilot, and adventurer, and published in 1943, it has since become an oddball but revered children’s classic, standing beside The Phantom Tollbooth, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Charlotte’s Web. All of these books combine the mundane with the fantastic, serving as allegories for the adults and bizarre life lessons for children. Middle school fantasies like that don’t seem to be written too much anymore. Sure, we have the likes of Lemony Snicket and Rick Riordan, but they’re more satirical and slapstick. Books written before the 1970s were more quirky, and perhaps more subversive. They made both child and adult challenge their way of looking at the world.

The Little Prince, if you aren’t familiar with it, is about a nameless aviator who crashes his plane in the desert. There he meets a small child who tells him he is from a tiny planetoid where there is barely enough room to walk around. The child, the Little Prince of the book, tells the Pilot his story: he grows a sentient rose bush, who, though she loves him, proves cranky and problematic; so he sets off to explore the rest of the universe. On other tiny worlds he learns some farcical life lessons from The General, The Historian, The Accountant, and more; on Earth he encounters a snake and fox who impart more lessons. There’s a bit about a drawing that could be an elephant-eating snake or a hat, as sketched by the pilot, but the two mainly talk. In the end, the Pilot fixes his plane but the child disappears.

(Taken psychologically, the encounter could be a manifestation of extra party syndrome, where people in dire straits dream up a companion who keeps them sane and/or comforts them in dire circumstances.)

Book met Hollywood in 1973, when it was adapted as a musical by the Broadway team of Lerner and Loewe who had written the musicals Camelot and My Fair Lady. It seemed to be a sure hit in a time of lively kid-oriented musicals like Oliver, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday Morning TV shows like H. R. Pufnstuf and The Bugaloos, both of which featured original songs and elaborate musical numbers. But the result fell short.

Never heard of it? Neither did I, until I watched it for myself a few weeks ago.

Continue reading