For its eightieth birthday, “The Little Prince” is given a second youth | EUROtoday

At 80, he’s trying youthful. For the primary time since its launch in France in April 1946, “The Little Prince” is being reinterpreted by the MinaLima studio, celebrated for its Harry Potter illustrations, which invitations you to reread Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s story with shiny colours and pop-up animations.

This album, launched Thursday in 22 languages, provides a placing distinction with the drawings made in watercolor and pastel tones by Saint-Exupéry to deliver his younger hero to life.

“It was important to take the opposite view of what everyone knows and what has become so familiar over the past 80 years. We therefore projected ‘The Little Prince’ in a very colorful universe, without using white”, very current in Saint-Exupéry’s drawings, clarify Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima, the 2 creators of the MinaLima studio, in an interview with AFP.

Their album has round 100 illustrations, many greater than the unique, which generally occupy a double web page and embody round ten pop-up animations that are very fashionable with younger readers.

“Facilitate transmission”

The illustration studio, based mostly in London, had “carte blanche” from Gallimard, Saint-Exupéry’s historic writer, who contacted it two years in the past after being happy with their collaboration on the Harry Potter albums, JK Rowling’s profitable saga.

Such variations “can bring a new shine to the text and facilitate its transmission from one generation to another,” maintains Antoine Gallimard, the CEO of the publishing home.

The wager is formidable since MinaLima’s “The Little Prince” has a primary print run of 250,000 copies worldwide.

In its authentic model, the story has been thrilling publishing counters for eight many years: 300 million copies have been offered, together with 18 million in France, based on the writer.

It can also be essentially the most translated e book, in 650 languages ​​and dialects, after the Bible.

Mythical determine

When he left France, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had been useless for 2 years, after disappearing throughout a reconnaissance flight on July 31, 1944 over the Mediterranean.

The pilot author, celebrated for his novels “Vol de Nuit” and “Terre des Hommes”, revealed “The Little Prince” in 1943 within the United States, the place he lived following the invasion of France by the German military. His American writer had inspired him to jot down a kids’s story after seeing him scribbling on the nook of the desk.

“What a singular destiny is that of this little man, born in all humility on thin sheets of paper hastily scribbled by a renowned writer, and who became one of the most present imaginary figures in the world, a myth perhaps,” underlines Alban Cerisier, specialist in Saint-Exupéry, who indicators the afterword of the brand new paperback version from Folio.

For Miraphora Mina, studying “The Little Prince” is extra helpful than ever. Because “it brings light to a very dark world” in addition to “a different perspective on things that we believe to be immutable”.

Tribute sequence

To mark the eightieth anniversary, Gallimard additionally revealed the unique manuscript of the story, whereas the caricature “Saint-Exupéry and the origin of the Little Prince” (Glénat) was launched, La Poste marketed a sequence of stamps and immersive exhibitions opened on the Carrière des Lumières in Baux-de-Provence and on the Bassin des Lumières in Bordeaux.

Film, cartoons, retailers, amusement park in Alsace and everlasting exhibition in South Korea…: “The Little Prince” has develop into through the years a profitable industrial license managed by the Saint Exupéry – d’Agay Estate. But “no fast food, no oil company, no animal suffering, no projects incompatible with the spirit of the text”, assures Thomas Rivière, great-grandnephew of the author.

The rights to “The Little Prince” have fallen into the general public area in nearly all nations, besides in France the place they run till 2032, because of the writer’s warfare hero standing, and within the United States till 2034.

With AFP