Of all the little boys in children's books, the Little Prince is the greatest heartbreaker, but his tale leaves you happy-sad. Patiently, he travels from planet to planet learning grown-up ways, and just as patiently, he turns them on their head.

The characters he meets in outer space are the shards of human weakness that make up our delusions -- the conceited man who wants to be admired, the tippler who drinks to forget that he drinks, the businessman who thinks he owns the stars, the lamplighter who must light and extinguish his lamp every minute because his planet revolves so quickly.

Unfazed by extreme personalities, the Little Prince soldiers on until he reaches the earth. Here he befriends a fox and a man he finds lost in the desert. In typical Little Prince logic, the gifts they give each other cannot be seen or touched -- only felt. The Prince teaches the man to trust, leading him to a well in the heart of the Sahara. The fox teaches the Prince about attachment, begging the little boy to tame him.

No sooner do we get to know the Prince (and like anyone worthwhile, he's hard to get to know) than he has to leave. Before splitting the scene, the Prince asks us to believe that he is not dead but merely traveling back through space.

The joy of this book lies in the fact that it covers heavy ground (love, death, yearning) without being earnest or maudlin. Loike a good friend, it makes you an accomplice in a secret language and forces you to be understanding toward peculiar ways. After The Little Prince, you'll want to draw everything (no matter how clumsily) and question everything.

And you'll never see the stars the same way again.