Raconte moi une histoire is a daily virtual reading series of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery in French and English, presented by the Alliance Française de Chicago. The series was launched to provide a calming oulet to kids and families as we grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tune in every day at 8:00 p.m. (CST) on the Alliance Française's Facebook page between Monday, May 18 and Tuesday, May 26, 2020. Readings will last between 10 and 15 minutes.
Not on Facebook? Register to receive a YouTube link.
About The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince)
This novella was written by French aristocrat, writer, and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry featuring the author's own illustrations. It was first published in English and French in the US by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943, and posthumously in France following the liberation since Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the Vichy Régime. It has been translated into hundreds of languages and has sold some 200 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books in publishing history.
About Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Many critics drew parallels between the characters and events of The Little Prince and the life of its author, who wrote the book while living in New York City, having fled the turmoil of World War II in France. Like the narrator, Saint-Exupéry was a pilot who experienced a plane crash in a desert (Libya). His wife, Consuelo, is also said to have had erratic behaviour similar to that of the prince’s rose—a parallel further emphasized by Consuelo’s later autobiography, The Tale of the Rose (written in 1945 and published 2000). Thus, the narrator and little prince have been viewed as expressions of different aspects of Saint-Exupéry himself. Saint-Exupery disappeared mysteriously during a night flight ove the Mediterranean in July 1944.
