Le Petit Prince

I speak French, so I was very much excited, when, in my fourth year of French class, we finally got to read a "real" book in French. That book was Le Petit Prince par Antoine de Saint Exupéry. (This is also available in English translation as: The Little Prince)
      Before I started, I didn't realize how charming the book would be, or how much it would ring true. The book is about the narrator's first drawings - a snake that looks like a hat, and a second one showing the elephant inside the snake - and how the drawings were scoffed at by les grands personnes. The narrator then stops drawing and becomes a pilot, eventually crashing his plane in the Sahara. It is here where he is visited by the little prince, who lives on a little planet and loves sunsets - but most of all, his flower.
      The prince lives on Asteroid B-612 with three volcanoes (two active and one extinct. But as the little prince says, "One never knows!")
      The story follows the little prince's trip from his planet to Earth, on the way encountering other planets. On Earth, he tames a fox, who teaches the little prince about friendship.
      The book, being French, does not have the happiest of endings. However, the rest of the book makes up for this. And if you can read it in French, it will be so much richer.

Picture found through Google.