SOURCE: Knight of the Air: The Life and Works of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Pageant Press, Inc., 1956, pp. 189-200.

Smith was an American educator and critic who specialized in French literature. In the following essay, he provides a highly favorable assessment of The Little Prince.

The Little Prince was published in New York in the spring of 1943 in both English and French editions but was not well known to French readers until the Gallimard edition of 1946. Unique among all of his writings, it is a delicate and ethereal fairy tale apparently addressed to children although its wide philosophical overtones as a parable will be understood only by adults. There has been much discussion concerning the author's purpose in writing this charming fable. Was it a brief relaxation from the anguish concerning his country which tormented him in his American exile, a bit of playful and poetic whimsey for...