On a snowy afternoon a couple weeks ago, I had a day off of work, so I met a friend at Wealthy Street Bakery. We spent a chunk of our time together quiet in concentration, coloring with crayons. I drew something like the sun, something like the earth, and my signature character, Space Dino, alongside her snail companion, Cleo. And then I drew the Little Prince on his little planet, with his rose. Perhaps Space Dino and the Little Prince were finally going to meet one another. 

When we’d both taken a pause and set down our crayons, we looked at each other’s drawings. He pointed at the Little Prince. “Who is that?” 

I first read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when I was eighteen, after I’d accepted a role (or, rather, nine roles) in a small-cast stage adaptation of the book. I remember being surprised that I hadn’t read it sooner—the second most translated book in the world, and a children’s book nonetheless. Ever since that first reading, the story has stayed with me. At its core, it’s a story about childlikeness and love, and adults who lose sight of what really matters in life.

My drawing of the Little Prince sparked a conversation about children’s literature. My friend and I agreed there’s something uniquely powerful when wise writers write for young readers. These are the stories we return to—the ones that hold something worth revisiting again and again.

At least I’ve found this to be true. I’m the biggest Frog and Toad fan. I remember my first read of books like The Giver or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—my dad switching registers to his baritone Aslan voice—or stories like The Giving Tree. How many times has this conversation resurfaced over the years: Have you read this one? I remember reading this for the first time. These exchanges are, in my experience, among the most animated, delight-ridden; for a moment, a spirit of childlike wonder reawakens inside us as we remember what it was like to experience the story for the first time.

The Little Prince is one of the stories I’ve come back to time and again since that first read. There’s so much wisdom packed into such a thin book. I recognize the world the Aviator mourns in our world today, and I’ve tried to hold onto the childlike way of seeing embodied by the Little Prince. But we see it too often: in adulthood, it’s easy for people to become absorbed in their own ways of being and thinking. There’s no parent or teacher holding them accountable to curiosity or empathy. Walls go up. Social echo chambers form. Numbness takes over. Imaginations shrink. Despair can start to win. Some of these shifts seem unavoidable, and the Aviator seems to agree: “I, alas, do not know how to see sheep through the walls of boxes. Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups. I have had to grow old.”

I’ve found that revisiting children’s literature, the books that first shaped my love for reading, helps me stay centered. C.S. Lewis writes in his essay, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,” “If I had had to lose the fairy tales in order to acquire the novelists, I would not say that I had grown but only that I had changed… for I now enjoy the fairy tales better than I did in childhood: being now able to put more in, of course I get more out.” Good stories written for young readers confront the weight of the world—grief, injustice, fear, hatred—in an honest way, and, at the same time, I’ve never read a children’s story that leaves me feeling hopeless in the way that adult literature or simply adult life sometimes can. They always point to something more. I think we need that.

In The Little Prince, even the Aviator, who as a child dreamed and drew and was disappointed by the narrow-mindedness of adults, has lost some perspective. He has forgotten what it was to be a child. It is because of the Little Prince that the Aviator is reminded of what truly matters: “It is only in the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

In these busy, grief-ridden days, in a culture that seems to be heading toward nihilism, let’s, alongside the Aviator, seek to recenter on what matters most. Let’s revisit stories from our childhoods. Maybe we’ll remember how to imagine, hope, and see with the heart. Perhaps it will help us glimpse the golden we knew when we were children.

Madeline Witvliet

Madeline Witvliet (’25) graduated from Calvin with a degree in English. She can be found in coffee shops in Eastown, exploring Michigan’s state parks, or singing with Calvin’s Alumni Choir. Madeline enjoys spending time outdoors, crafting, and cooking Mediterranean-inspired meals.