To mark the 60^th anniversary of the publication of in France, the Artois Saint-Exupéry association is staging a fascinating exhibition at the Casino d’Arras from 26 to 29 January, on The Little Prince in the light of today and his message for the 21^st century. This will be accompanied by a performance of Le Petit Prince by Compagnie Blondeau, and a lecture by Howard Scherry.

Detailed programme:
Thursday 26 to Sunday 29 (afternoon): Exhibition on The Little Prince in the light of today (admission free)
Saturday 28 January at 8.30 p.m. and Sunday 29 January at 4.00 p.m.: Performance of Le Petit Prince by Compagnie Blondeau (admission: adults 14 € – children 9 €)
Saturday 28 January at 3.00 p.m.: Lecture by Mr. Howard Scherry: Saint-Exupéry in New York, 1941-1944 (admission free)

Artois Saint-Exupéry
10, rue Edouard Branly
62 000 Arras 

Hakone, a small town with a population of 15,000 inhabitants not far from Mount Fuji, is home to the Museum of The Little Prince. Opened in 1999, the museum is also dedicated to the Little Prince’s creator, and takes the visitor deep into the world of Saint-Exupéry and his times.
The museum covers an area of 10,000 m² and is entered through an exact replica of the great gate to the Chateau of Saint-Maurice-de-Rémens, where the visitor is confronted by a statue of The Little Prince on his planet. The visit begins with a tour of a Provençal quarter, where every detail is heavy with symbolism, such as the hotel named after Guillaumet or the manhole covers stamped with drawings of The Little Prince. A little further on, we find a Lyons street circa 1900, representing the year and the place of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s birth. This is also where you will find the museum that retraces the life of the aviator in a series of rooms devoted to his childhood, l’Aéropostale, Cap Juby, Argentina, New York, etc. The walls are covered in period photographs, documents and manuscripts in the author’s hand. The next stage in the visit is an exhibition of translations of The Little Prince. Finally, the visitor comes to the formal gardens and a life-size reconstruction of the facade of the Chateau of Saint-Maurice-de-Rémens.

These are just some of the countless surprises the Museum of The Little Prince in Hakone reserves for visitors, not forgetting the « Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry » rose-garden or the chapel, inspired by the chapel of the original chateau. In just six years, the museum has already attracted over a million visitors. But how and why did such a museum come into being in Japan? It was founded by Mrs. Akiko Torii in 1999, to mark the centenary of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s birth. Like so many of us, she discovered The Little Prince as a child. The book inspired her with a passionate admiration for the aviator. She later became the Saint-Exupéry estate’s representative in Japan.

Find out more:
Interview with Akiko Torii and guided tour of the Museum of The Little Prince (in french)
Museum of The Little Prince, Hakone

Since 1998, this voluntary organisation has made it possible for sick children to take to the air and experience a world hitherto closed to them: the world of flight. This year, in the course of the one-day operation, 61 children will discover the skies over Lyons aboard two airplanes and a helicopter.

All sorts of other activities will also be on offer, including an introduction to archery, blowpipes or darts, a make-up workshop, a display of vintage motorcycles and cars. A sidecar club will be taking children for rides, and there will also be an exhibition of some of the legendary airplanes from aeronautical history.

Sunday 25 September 2005
5^th annual edition of the operation Les Ailes du Petit Prince at Lyon-Bron airport.

Think of an idea of your own to write a poem or text or take your inspiration from The Little Prince, and then arrange the words to make a picture.

A calligram is a subtle blend of drawing and writing. The name was invented by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1918. To enter the competition, compose a poem or a text of your own or choose a phrase from The Little Prince and arrange it to make a picture – a Christmas tree, perhaps, or whatever your imagination suggests. The « precise » definition of a calligram is a poem or text which is laid out in a visual representation that relates to the words.

Entries must be submitted by 15 January 2005. You will receive your gift on receipt of your calligram. A selection of entries will be featured on The Little Prince website, unless you state in your letter that you do not wish your entry to be published online. We regret that entries cannot be returned.

This competition is now closed.

The opera The Little Prince was written by Hollywood Oscar-winning composer Rachel Portman and directed by Francesca Zambello. It is currently being co-produced by the BBC and Sony Classical in the UK and is to be shown on TV on 29 November 2004 on BBC 2, with a further broadcast scheduled for Christmas. A double-CD audio version and a DVD are available from Sony Classical.

What is perhaps most impressive is that over 25,000 children from all over the UK applied to take part. A total of 6,500 talented youngsters were auditioned, all aged between 7 and 16, but only a handful stood a chance of being selected to play the roles of the little prince and the rose, alongside Willard White (the king), Aled Jones (the drunkard) and Lesley Garrett (the fox). In the end, Joseph MacManners was chosen for the role of the little prince, and played his part with extraordinary talent. The singers were filmed by children\’s TV programme Blue Peter during their performance.

A double-CD audio version and a DVD are available from Sony Classical. The DVD contains a bonus feature of the recordings directed by Blue Peter.

Prologue:
When the pilot was still a child, he used to draw wonderful drawings, but grown-ups never understood them. Now he is a pilot and flies all over the world, steering by the stars. 

To mark the 60^th anniversary of the publication of The Little Prince in France, the Artois Saint-Exupéry association is organising a series of exhibitions and lecture-debates on the life and works of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince.

For further information, contact Mr. Thierry Spas:
Tel: 06 89 72 97 34
or e-mail: t-spas@ville-arras.fr

The Les Amis du Petit Théâtre d’Ombre shadow puppet theatre group is embarking on a French tour from September to November 2003. The troupe of young Cambodians (6 musicians and 7 puppeteers), all aged between 16 and 20 and accompanied by three adults, will present a series of performances based on the repertoire of the 2000 tour.

The repertoire will also contain new pieces, including an adaptation of the Ramayana, a piece inspired by The Little Prince and creations based on themes from modern life. All the items in the repertoire will be subtitled in French.

Find out more: http://www.editomac.fr/ombre/

The Little Prince in Indonesian…
The Indonesian archipelago is not only a crossroads where almost all the world’s great civilisations – Indian, Chinese, Islamic and Western – meet and mingle. It is also a particularly interesting region in which to depart from the orientalist’s approach and adopt that of the anthropologists, who generally focus their attention on the Pacific islands and the confines of Melanesia. Indonesian is the official language of the 200 million or so citizens of the Republic of Indonesia. The Malay spoken in Malaysia and the Malay spoken in the Sultanate of Brunei and Singapore are merely variants of a common language that has evolved along different lines according to the dictates of colonialism. These languages, which use Latin characters, have been influenced by Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese and European languages.

The Little Prince in Urdu, translated by Shafiq Naz and Bilqis Naz.
Urdu is nowadays the national and official language of Pakistan (population approximately 125 million). Urdu has long been a lingua franca in the region, and is spoken in all the towns and cities. The ethnic language of Muslim refugees from Northern India after Partition in 1947, over the last 150 years Urdu has acquired the status of language of culture in the Pakistani Punjab. Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language of Northern India which shares much of its syntax and morphology with Hindi, apart from certain Persian elements. The basic Urdu vocabulary is also shared with modern Hindi.

Numerous borrowings from the Arabic and Persian, however, have given the phonological system of Urdu a number of extra phonemes, and the Persian influence means that it excludes certain phonemes introduced by the Sanskritisation of modern Hindi.  Urdu derives all its learned, literary, political and religious vocabulary from Arabic and Persian. The same applies to scientific vocabulary, although English neologisms are common.

SIPAR has published The Little Prince in Khmer, with the assistance of the Department of French Studies at Phnom Penh University.
Through SIPAR, Béatrice Montariol is working to promote reading in Cambodia, where illiteracy rates are high. « We thought it an excellent book to promote reading across the country, » she emphasised.
Since 1991, SIPAR has set up 70 libraries and three mobile libraries operating around the outskirts of Phnom Penh, and organised training for librarians. In 2000, SIPAR launched a programme of publishing books in Khmer with the aim of providing low-cost, high-quality educational books.

SIPAR: Soutien à l’Initiative Privée pour l’Aide à la Reconstruction des Pays du Sud-Est Asiatique (support for private initiative to aid in the reconstruction of South East Asian countries).

Find out more: http://www.sipar.org/