Description
Product Description Peter Sís's remarkable biography The Pilot and the Little Prince celebrates the author of The Little Prince, one of the most beloved books in the world. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born in France in 1900, when airplanes were just being invented. Antoine dreamed of flying and grew up to be a pilot―and that was when his adventures began. He found a job delivering mail by plane, which had never been done before. He and his fellow pilots traveled to faraway places and discovered new ways of getting from one place to the next. Antoine flew over mountains and deserts. He battled winds and storms. He tried to break aviation records, and sometimes he even crashed. From his plane, Antoine looked down on the earth and was inspired to write about his life and his pilot-hero friends in memoirs and in fiction. A Frances Foster Book This title has Common Core connections. From School Library Journal 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), Sís'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-Exupéry'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 Sís'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. Sís 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 Méliès moon, add meaning. Sís'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-Exupéry to those of his young, fictional friend. Brilliant bookmaking.—Wendy Lukehart, District of Columbia Public Library From Booklist *Starred Review* Sís’ works are less picture books than little miracles of design, a craft he now devotes to a biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince. That de Saint-Exupéry’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 Sís 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. Sís (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. Sís’ masterful and moving sense of design never fails. Grades 1-4. --Jesse Karp Review “*Sis' mystically touched style enhances this biography
Features
- Farrar Straus Giroux