A Tale of Two Books: The Alchemist & The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist are two of the most popular books in history, each selling over 150 million copies. Both are simple yet convoluted tales set in fantastical places. However only one of these books is worth the read, multiple reads in fact, while the other comes across like an inspirational poster on a middle school teacher’s wall.

The first half of Coelho’s book isn’t awful, following a boy in search of treasure, but the writing, attempting some kind of mythic, becomes tedious and facile. “Well, why did you say that I don’t know about love?” the sun asked the boy. More than anything though, it is the repetition of the two phrases Personal Legend and Soul of the World that tips the experience into something barely worth skimming.

Saint-Exupéry’s tale, on the other hand, straddles the wonder of a child’s imagination and philosophical reflection.

It offers a fairly simple rundown of the problems of mankind but with wonderful phrasings such as If you tame me, then we’ll need each other. Most of all, it is the structure of the work, the little prince an apparition to a man lost in the desert, and the painful finale where nothing is resolved. We just want the little prince to come back.

Pre-Teen Book Shelf

When I was a kid, I had a long low book shelf crowded with souvenirs, magazines and books. My souvenir shell frog from Florida was a favorite as was a wooden bear toy my parents brought back from Russia. And of course I had the ubiquitous giant eraser.

I was just beginning to grow my book collection, including Treasure Island, Sterling North’s Rascal and a book about Red-Tailed Hawks.

More than anything, I was into nature magazines, especially National & International Wildlife. I’d decided that I was going to work with animals, maybe be a zookeeper, and was determined to read every article in every issue to start my zoology education. But then I lost my focus and realized these magazines were a good hiding place for a new interest I had begun to develop.