Me and the Little Prince: When the Hero of Exupery Inspires the Creative
Writing of Toddlers

Eleni Ilia

(University of Athens, Greece)

Abstract: The Little Prince, the main literary hero of the homonymous work of Exupery, is a universal and timeless symbol of childhood. As the author presents him in contrast to adult narrative characters, whose characteristics are imitated in the work, the reader perceives childhood as an idealized situation. In particular, the children-readers, as they identify with the specific literary model, acquire self-knowledge and self-confidence. The awareness that literature is the most effective and irreplaceable means of education, leads to the design and implementation of various educational programs with reference to the Little Prince, so that students from an early age could benefit from its enormous pedagogical value of the work of Exupery. In the first of the programs, the magic wand touches the students one after the other, so they choose which hero they will play. After wearing the characteristic object of this hero and taking the appropriate position on stage, answering the teacher’s questions, they refer to the first person singular in the work through his own point of view. In the second program, toddlers are invited to imagine a meeting with the Little Prince, in order to reassure the pilot-narrator of the project, who eagerly asks the readers to be informed, if the Little Prince visited the earth again. In the third program, just as the pilot meets his children self in the desert in the person of the Little Prince, so the toddlers are invited to a meeting with their adult self where they project their personal desires, dreaming of their development. The narrations of the toddlers in the three programs that took place in different school years in Nursery Schools of Attica, are converted into written texts with the contribution of the teacher who records them. As toddlers realize that their oral speech is faithfully represented by writing, they experience creative writing, they are introduced to the process of recording and rescuing their creative thinking.