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The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Author:
Sis, Peter
Biographee:
Saint-Exupery, Antoine de
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Class:
Biography
Age: 3-8
Language: English
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LC: PQ2637.A
Grade: P-3
Print Run: 150000
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ISBN-13: 9780374380694
LCCN: 2013027732
Imprint: Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Pub Date: 05/27/2014
Availability: Available
List: $24.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 31 cm
H 12.34",
W 9.39",
D 0.42",
1.18 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's For Youth Interest: Popular
Brodart's Fresh Reads for Kids TIPS Selections
Brodart's Insight Catalog: Children
Brodart's TOP Juvenile Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Booklist High-Demand Hot List
Children's Core Collection, 22nd ed.
Children's Core Collection, 23rd ed.
Children's Core Collection, 24th ed.
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Awards:
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BCCB Starred Reviews
Booklist Editors Choice
Booklist Starred Reviews
Horn Book Guide Titles, Rated 1 - 4
Kirkus Best Books
Kirkus Starred Reviews
New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books Award Winners
Notable Children's Books in the English Language Arts
Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People
School Library Journal Best Books
School Library Journal Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Booklist
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal
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TIPS Subjects:
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Aviation/Aeronautics
Western Europe
Biography, Individual
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BISAC Subjects: |
JUVENILE NONFICTION / Biography & Autobiography / Literary
JUVENILE NONFICTION / Transportation / Aviation
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LC Subjects:
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Air pilots, France, Biography
Air pilots, France, Biography, Juvenile literature
Authors, French, 20th century, Biography
Authors, French, 20th century, Biography, Juvenile literature
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de,, 1900-1944, Juvenile literature
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de,, 1900-1944
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de,, 1900-1944, Juvenile literature
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SEARS Subjects: |
Air pilots, Biography
French authors, Biography
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de,, 1900-1944
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Reading Programs: |
Accelerated Reader Level:
5.6
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Points: 1.0
Lexile Level:
880
Reading Counts Level:
5.7
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Points: 3.0
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Juvenile Titles | 04/01/2014 |
| Watch as the pilot and author of 'The Little Prince' soars straight into history with a visual account of the man who went on to share his adventurous flying stories with the world. 48pp., Color Ill. |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Booklist | 03/15/2014 |
| Grades 1-4. Sis' works are less picture books than little miracles of design, a craft he now devotes to a biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince. That de Saint-Exupery's life was interesting in its own right--growing up fatherless, pioneering ever-more dangerous airmail delivery routes, flying in WWII--is nearly beside the point, because Sis has created such a compelling, multilayered visual treat. The writing itself occupies three levels: one at the bottom of the page tells the exciting but bare-bones story, ideal for younger children looking for a general overview; a second level directly above offers small, colorful details captioned with succinct facts; and the third offers more complex factual information integrated into the images. And what images they are! Multifaceted and evocative, they capture the mile-a-second swirl of a little boy's imagination, the awesome grandeur of flight, and the danger of battle. Sis (The Wall, 2007) never misses an opportunity to hit readers with the power of pure image, as in a two-page spread of a plane flying over a geography of faces, sure to live on in many a child's imagination. Sis' masterful and moving sense of design never fails. Karp, Jesse. 48p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books | 07/01/2014 |
| R. Gr. 4-8. Sis' mystically touched style enhances this biography of famous French aviator and author Saint-Exupery, who is most famous in America for his authorship of The Little Prince. For all the titular reference to that book, however, this is more focused on Saint-Exupery the adventurous and pioneering aviator, and a dramatic story it is. Saint-Exupery dreamed from early youth of becoming a pilot, eventually becoming part of the innovative plan to deliver the mail by air in the 1920s. He flew deliveries over Europe and northwest Africa, lived for a time in the Western Sahara, and then developed routes to South America. When World War II came, Saint-Exupery ended up exiled to New York, where he penned The Little Prince; eventually he joined a French squadron in North Africa, flying reconnaissance, and was lost without a trace on a flight in 1944. This is a highly effective distillation of a fascinating life, and its focus on the opening up of the skies will be a revelation to kids whose knowledge extends only to the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh. As usual with Sis, design and art are part of the story rather than partnering it, and the round captioned vignettes that dapple or underscore the spreads provide ample opportunity for reader engagement. Dramatic vistas balance empty space of desert or sky against details that often have their own haunting graphic impact in the delicately stippled components; Sis' maps take the aesthetic of early maps, with browned touches and curious particulars, and brush them with symbolism to treat cities and landscapes as animate as well as animated. This would add considerable dimension to explorations of early flight, but it would also pair excellently with an introduction-or reintroduction-to The Little Prince. A brief bibliography is included on the copyright page. DS. 44p. THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIV. OF ILLINOIS, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 04/01/2014 |
| What was essential about one golden-haired boy in love with flying becomes visible in Sis' richly visual biographical portrait of French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Sis covers the basics: Saint-Exupery briefly studied architecture, then was a pioneer air mail pilot and began to publish his stories. Assigned to the mail station at Cape Juby in the Spanish Sahara, "he loved the solitude and being under millions of stars." He spent two of the war years exiled in New York and finally returned to fly for France. Sis' work invites readers to take time, to attend to the narrative in both the straightforward text and the nuanced, complex pictures. Antoine's pilot friend Guillaumet advises him "to follow the face of the landscape": A small plane flies over faces in the dunes (perhaps a nod to Saint-Exupery's Terres des Hommes). A desert fox greets one of Antoine's several crashes, but instead of direct speculation about Saint-Exupery's inspiration for The Little Prince, Sis offers a multifaceted look at the author as adventurer and dreamer. Saint-Exupery disappeared over the sea near Corsica in 1944: In Sis' poignant illustration, the lines of the Lockheed P-38 become the wings and bicycle of a flying machine, a little like one Antoine made as a child. Extraordinary and wonderful. (Picture book/biography. 6-12). 48pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| School Library Journal | 04/01/2014 |
| Gr 4 Up. As in his works about other restless souls who charted their courses by the stars and pondered big questions (Columbus, Galileo, Darwin), Sis's picture-book biography of the famous French aviator and author comprises multiple layers. Trim but informative sentences ground the pages where text appears ("When he was four years old, his father died unexpectedly. The boy wondered, Where did he go?"). Sensitive readers will follow that question into the heart of the story that encompasses Saint-Exupery's childhood, passion for flying, experiences with military and commercial planes, multiple crashes, risk-taking temperament, friendships, marriage, and publications. Dates, places, events, and exploits swirl around smaller images framed cleverly with bubbles, sequential panels, maps, or airplanes. The emotional content comes through the changing colors and compositions of Sis's exquisite double spreads. Many are wordless, as when the pilot stands at the edge of the vast turquoise ocean; above the horizon, twinkling yellow stars form the curls and eyes of the title character of The Little Prince. Sis is as adept at drama (the red paint bleeding from the sky as the Germans bomb France) as he is at subtle humor (an aerial view of Manhattan portrays the city as an alligator-shaped landmass emerging from a sewer). Slyly inserted referents, from an elephant inside a "hat" to a Melies moon, add meaning. Sis's handling of the aviator's last flight and disappearance strikes just the right notes of mystery, majesty, and quiet wonder that connect the life and longings of Saint-Exupery to those of his young, fictional friend. Brilliant bookmaking. Wendy Lukehart, District of Columbia Public Library. 48p. SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| Horn Book | 05/01/2014 |
| Primary, Intermediate. On glorious blue endpapers, an airplane loops across a map of the world, its contrail made of words that seem to dissolve on the page. The pointillist style of the map's outline suggests both stargazing and looking through a microscope. So Sis foreshadows the scope of this picture book biography, simultaneously grand and intimate, and its tone: subtle, playful, and mysterious. The narrative includes a history of airplanes and pilots, the beginnings of air mail, two world wars, scenes on four continents, and an extraordinary number of plane crashes, all augmenting the central story of Antoine, the golden-haired boy who never stopped exploring and adventuring, in the air and on the page. The main text, a fairly clear line through Saint-Exupery's life, is supplemented with myriad facts about his world, arranged in delicate circles around the edges of Sis's signature illustrated medallions. Here you can find information on Saint-Exupery's family tree or the perfume inspired by his book Night Flight or pithy anecdotes about his writing life. Visually stunning, this impressive accumulation of words, pictures, and design takes you to The Little Prince (rev. 5/43), or back to it, with fresh understanding and admiration. sarah ellis. 48pg. THE HORN BOOK, c2014. |
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| Horn Book Guide | 11/01/2014 |
| 2. K-3. This visually stunning picture book biography includes a history of airplanes and pilots, the beginnings of air mail, two world wars, and an extraordinary number of plane crashes, all augmenting the central story of the golden-haired boy Antoine. The main text on Saint-Exupiry's life is supplemented with facts about his world, arranged in delicate circles around the edges of Sis's signature illustrated medallions. se. 48pg. THE HORN BOOK, c2014. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 03/03/2014 |
| Ages 5-9. Following biographies of Darwin and Galileo, Sis celebrates legendary pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944). As in The Tree of Life, Sis supplements a main narrative with time lines and insets, wrapping squint-inducing italics around dreamlike illustrations. Readers learn about Saint-Exupery's fascination with flight and roles as a mail and military pilot. The spreads allude to Melies' Le Voyage dans la lune and map Saint-Exupery's North African mail routes, without examining WWI or colonial history. Sis crafts expansive, nostalgic palimpsests, illustrating the hero's adventures with precision ink dots on sepia ground, yet he writes with emotional distance. Readers may wonder why Saint-Exupery's father, brother, and sister died young; why "hostile nomads" objected to his Moroccan outpost; why his wife has a Spanish name; and how he and his friends survived multiple plane crashes. Sis recounts astounding feats in an offhand tone (two fliers landed their plane "on a ledge" in the Andes, then "rocked it until it went over the edge and started up"). Gorgeous, densely imagined, yet fragmented in its telling, this narrative will send readers beyond The Little Prince to hear more of this mind-boggling story. (May). 48p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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9780374380694,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 06/15/2014 |
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