The Little Prince: A French/English Bilingual Reader [Paperback]

This bilingual version of the classic "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a nice way to improve your French.

Instead of most bilingual books out there, you get the French and English translation on the same page in vertical columns with the text arranged in such a way that it is easy to jump around from French to English and not lose your place. Longer paragraphs have lines under certain sentences so you have a clear point of reference, a great little feature.

The book comes with an mp3 CD with recordings in English and French and this is great to have as you read through the book, making sure you know the correct pronunciation of anything. The French reader's voice is very pleasant and clear as is the recording for the English translation. Having both recordings in French and English can be useful as you can also read the French while listening to the English recording which can be very useful.

It would be nice to have an appendix explaining some of the more odd turns of phrase to an anglophone's ear when reading in French and perhaps a glossary of uncommon words but that is just a minor niggle.

The format is so much better than normal bilingual books where the different languages texts have a page to themselves with usually little to no alignment. A lovely little book and the format is a winner. I look forward to future books in the same style.

Le Petit Prince is a book I've been intending to read for some time. It's a children's book really, but has become recognised as a classic suitable for all ages due to the way it uses its young protagnist's encounters with adults to explore the absurdity of human behaviour, and society in general.

The book is intended to be used both ways -- for French-speaking learners of English and for English-speaking learners of French.

For the learner of English, I say "don't bother". The English translation is quite archaic and occassionally stilted, and is of little use as a model for the learner. The English recording on the MP3 CD is also quite strange, with the woman talking in a bizarre mixed-up accent that incorporates some UK-English sounds and some North American English sounds. The overall effect is that of listening to a foreign learner, even though the speaker is reportedly a native speaker of English.

The rest of this review focusses on the book as a tool for learners of French.

The layout used for this book is, as other reviewers have noted, quite unique among bilingual books. The text is laid out in two columns on each page, and the text has been manipulated to ensure that the relevant sentences appear as closely aligned as possible. At first this is a bit disorientating, as quite often the font becomes unusually narrow in the French, but once you've got used to it, it does help you to keep track of where you are. There are many parallel texts out there where a lot of time is lost in trying to find your place when switching between versions -- but this is definitely NOT a problem with this book.

Much of the charm of the original (and in the popular monolingual translations) was in its colourful illustration and layout. Unfortunately, the bilingual layout has affected this badly, and the print technology used for this low print-run book has led to the illustrations becoming grey, washed out and grainy. The quality of the print and paper is comparable with what you'd expect from a single-use workbook rather than something designed to be kept in the longer term.

Many of the phrases in the French are unlike things I've seen in learner texts, and as another reviewer says, there are no notes to explain what or how these work -- we are expected to be satisfied simply with the explanation.

The French version of the audio is clear and sounds OK to me, but in listening to it on it's own, an unexpected weakness jumped out at me: the illustrations are an integral part of the story and referred to in the text. This means that the audio doesn't work on it's own. If I'm listening to something as I read, ideally I would want to be able to revisit it later by listening to the audio on its own and trying to understand it, but this story isn't very suitable for that.

OVERALL
The book is certainly not expensive for what it is, and I will definitely keep hold of it for my students to use. It's not worth buying a classroom set, but definitely worth keeping in the library.
The true value in this book comes from the well-planned layout, even though the story chosen wasn't quite appropriate.

Hopefully Omilia will produce more books in this format, based on more contemporary material -- if there were a dozen or so different titles available they would be well worth keeping in a classroom library.

The best way to improve your vocabulary and pronunciation is using "real" books with audio read by natives.

The Little Prince is a great book to start. As far as vocabulary is concerned, be prepared to learn 700 nouns, 440 verbs, and 230 adjectives in a charming story of a pilot who crashed in the Sahara Desert and a Little Prince from an unknown planet. A classic for all ages!