The Happy Prince (1888)

Absolutely loved this book! It is the story of a golden statue of a prince who didn't see the poor conditions of his city while he was alive. As a statue, he finally sees these hardships and when a swallow lands on him he gives the bird a mission. Since the prince is so beautiful and covered in gold and gems, he tells the bird to take the gold and gems and give them to people in need. After the bird takes the sapphires out of the princes eyes, the bird decides to stay with the prince because he is now blind. I love this change because at first the bird wanted to leave because he wanted to go to Egypt. He stayed with him even in the winter and became too cold to survive and he died. As soon as the bird died, there was a cracking sound in the statue, a broken heart. I love that there was gold trimming all over the pages. It really caught my eye. I also love the theme of selflessness. The prince gave up pieces of himself to help his people. Also, the selflessness of the bird. Even though he was supposed to go to Egypt, he cared so much for the prince that he stayed. ( )

in the book, The Happy Prince you get to see how there are different types of social classes and how they live. Also the prince was so beautiful as the statue was covered with gold and on the prince's sword there was a ruby. When the swallow and prince meet, the prince tells the bird (swallow) when he was alive that he really didn't care about the people and his city. But now that the prince is dead and now a statue and can see everything that is ugly in his city, he wants to make it right and he does.
The author shows that it is the right things to help people out no matter who you are. Also the author did a good job retelling different stories within one book. The illustrations in the book are really good and you can see the gold that the happy prince has on his statue and the ruby on his sword. Things like that bring the whole story together. ( )

This is a book about a golden statue of a prince. When he was alive he did not notice all the bad things that were going on in his city. Like how many poor people there were and the hardships that were happening in these peoples actual homes. Then there was a sparrow that went to sleep at the foot of the statue on night where he saw that the prince was crying because of what he saw. So he decided to stay and help the prince until he was happy. So he kept on delivering the wealthiest parts of the statue to the different people of the town that the prince saw that needed all of that wealth. Then one day he had no gold on his statue anymore and could not see because the jewels of his eyes were taken out. After that the swallow stayed with the statue until one day the towns people found the broken heart of the prince and the dead swallow. This book has lots of pastel colors and uses lots of gold to depict the wealthy of the city.

A tender and beautiful story no matter your age. Still and always a favourite. ( )

One of the first 'movies' I watched (something like four decades ago) which immediately compelled me to seek out the book. After reading this story, I've gradually tried to get around to reading everything by Wilde. And though he's done a lot of diverse stuff, I've really enjoyed most of what I've read so far. ( )