Seventy Years of The Little Prince

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has created several new editions of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic The Little Prince to celebrate 70 years of publishing the book in the United States.

From Publisher's Weekly

Born in Lyons, France, Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince while living in the U.S. during a two-year, self-imposed exile from the Nazi occupation of his home country. A year after the book’s publication, the author disappeared over the Mediterranean while flying a reconnaissance mission for his French air squadron. He left behind a legacy that included eight additional books, among them Southern Mail, Night Flight, and Wind, Sand, and Stars.


. . . Released March 5, The Little Prince 70th Anniversary Gift Set packages a hardcover with a CD featuring actor Viggo Mortensen reading the unabridged text of Richard Howard’s 2000 translation from the French. A code included on the CD case enables visitors to the book’s Web site to download the narration onto computers and MP3 players. Other features of the site include a widget containing quotes from the classic and a clip of Mortensen’s recording.

. . . The Little Prince Paperback, also published on March 5, includes Saint-Exupéry’s original full-color art, a foreword by Wicked author Gregory Maguire, a reader’s guide, and a Common Core exemplar guide. This edition targets the book to the YA audience for the first time...

. . . Due out on April 16, The Little Prince Graphic Novel
is a new edition of Sfar’s adaptation, which has sold more than 500,000 copies since its 2010 publication in a jacketed hardcover format. “Joann Sfar is an incredibly talented artist and storyteller,” says (Editor Cynthia) Platt. “Though his original graphic novel found a large readership, with this more affordable paper-over-board edition, we hope to deepen its audience.”

Happy Hobbit Day! Celebrating 75 Years in the Shire

~ In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Telegraph UK: The Hobbit Turns 75

The American Tolkien Society first proclaimed Hobbit Day in 1978, where celebrations including Hobbit feasts and parties will take place among fans of the children's books.

September 22 is also the birthday of Frodo Baggins, the main character in The Lord of The Rings played by Elijah Wood in the film franchise.

Bilbo and Frodo were both said to be born on the same day of different years, Bilbo in the year 2890 and Frodo in the year of 2968 in the books' 'Third Age'.

~ "Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it became a favorite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb.


From ABC News

J.R.R Tolkien, was a British World War I veteran who became a professor at Oxford’s Pembroke College. The book was published in 1937, receiving much praise and selling out in months. It would continue selling until the outbreak of World War II, when paper rationing limited printing until 1949.

However, when Tolkien wrote first wrote the Hobbit, it was never meant it for the public’s eyes. “The Hobbit was a children’s book. It was written in the first instance for his three sons,” Hammond told ABC News. “It was not written originally for publication.”

The book’s popularity, and that of its sequel, “The Lord of Rings,” has not faded over the last 75 years. “The Hobbit” has been translated into over 40 languages, gone through numerous re-printings, and spawned several film adaptations, most recently Peter Jackson’s. The Jackson film, a follow-up to his widely successful “Lord of the Rings” adaptations, is due to be released in three parts, the first of which is slated to come out in November.

~ As all things come to an end, even this story, a day came at last when they were in sight of the country where Bilbo had been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes.

From Collider Movie News

A new trailer for director Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has been released. This trailer shines an interesting light on the conundrum of the The Hobbit. It has to look even bigger than what came before, but what came before what a quest to save the entire world. The new trailer breaks down the plot, which is about the dwarfs reclaiming their homeland. So the stakes are smaller, but the adventure is somehow bigger. Putting that conflict aside, the trailer still makes the movie look like a fun time, and perhaps the best thing about The Hobbit is that we’ll get to return to Middle-Earth.

. . . The film stars Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Mark Hadlow, Graham McTavish, Dean Ogorman, Peter Hambleton, Aidan Turner, Jed Brophy, John Callen, Adam Brown, Ken Stott, William Kircher, Andy Serkis, and Richard Armitage. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens in 3D on December 14th.