My mum spent most of her early life in France so I grew up in a bilingual household. When I was four my mum read The Little Prince to me in French. I absolutely loved it!
The wild, untamed imagination appealed to me. Although I have to say, my exposure to the Little Prince's antics caused me to fail my first ever exam! I had to do a test for entry to Portsmouth Grammar school. The administrator asked us to draw a house. Saint Exupery's image of the boa constrictor eating an elephant was still resonating in my mind so I decided to draw a house in the shape of an orange. If a hat can be a snake eating an elephant then an orange can be a house! Needless to say the administrator wasn't impressed! What I love about my first contact with The Little Prince, and indeed other children's first contact too, is that the writer's imagination doesn't seem fantastical or strange to a young person because the ingenuity of a child's mind is so in tune with it. The Little Prince gives full expression to the infinite colour of a child's imagination!