I like reading fairy-tale stories. This summer I’ve read one of these tales The Little Prince. It’s a world-famous fairy-tale by the French writer, Antoine de St-Exupery, which was published in 1940.

As many other fairy-tales, the story of The Little Prince is very simple. “I” am a pilot whose plane has something wrong and lands in the Sahara. In this place, the pilot becomes the friend of the little prince, a little boy from another planet, the Asteroid B612. The little prince has left his tiny planet, because he has some quarrels with a rose which grows on his planet. So he left his own planet and traveled to some other planets.

On his journey, the little prince meets different kinds of people: a king, a conceited man, a tippler, a businessman, a lamplighter and a geographer. From these people he gets the idea that the grown-ups are very strange. Following the guide of the geographer, he comes to the Sahara desert on the Earth.

Traveling on the Earth, the little prince feels sad when he sees a garden of five-thousand roses because he considered his rose special in the universe before. At that time, a fox comes to him. The fox, who tells the little prince about the meaning of the word “tame”, becomes his new friend. At the time to say goodbye, the fox makes him know that his rose is special because she is his rose and tamed by him. From then on, the little prince begins to treasure friendship and be responsible for his rose.

Later he goes back to his own planet. He tells his friend, the pilot, he must be responsible for his rose, so he has to go back. At the end of the story, the author doesn’t tell us the ending directly. Maybe it’s more important for us to imagine and think over it.

One of the important characters in the tale is the rose. Growing on the planet, she is very beautiful, but she sometimes makes the little prince sad. Though they love each other, he is often unhappy. The character of the little prince stands for the children, and their pure ideas and deeds. While people on the other planets, such as the king, the businessman and the conceited man, they show the grown-ups’ world. The real meaning of this fairy-tale is pure love and friendship in our lives.

This little book moves me a lot. I seldom think about the true meaning of love and life before. Now I know more about life. I know it is difficult to keep a pure heart. I know people are different and they may hurt each other. I know the grown-ups also make mistakes. I know friends are important. The little prince is not only a fairy-tale for children, but also for grown-ups. Nevertheless, after I read this book, I feel a little sad, as we are losing a pure heart.