Published on April 6, 1943, by Reynal-Hitchcock, The Little Prince spoke English, and only some time later, thanks to the same publishers, did he speak French.

So who was he—American or French? 'The Little Prince' was conceived, drawn, and written in the United States throughout 1942. The book was commissioned; it was supposed to be a Christmas story for American children, and then French ones, to console them a little and distract them, some from the looming threat of war, others from its real hardships.

All this is true, but there is something else. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry flatly refused to learn English, and as early as 1939 he was writing a wonderful children's book, which was to be published in France by a printing house in Tours. But the bombing of Tours in 1940 decided things differently. It wasn't until 1946 that The Little Prince was published in France.

'Terre des Hommes' was published in 1939, winning the Grand Prix of the French Academy and being named the best book of the year by the American Booksellers Association. It took eight long years to accumulate the material for 'Terre des Hommes'—a work that was neither a novel nor a story, but a mosaic of short stories, essays, and articles.

But the cinematic version of the book, which the renowned French film director Jean Renoir was eager to create, never came to fruition.