On Friday, 18 December 2015, the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation carried out a special book donation at the National Library of Singapore (NLB) in the presence of His Excellency Benjamin Dubertret, Ambassador of France to Singapore, French artist Arnaud Nazare-Aga, Guillaume Levy-Lambert, board member of the Alliance Française of Singapore, Giovanni Viterale, General Manager of The Fullerton Hotel Singapore, and Nicolas Delsalle-Mun, Secretary General of the Foundation.

The Foundation donated 6 unique tactile Little Prince art books to Yeo Ando, Executive Director of the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped (SAVH), Jamuna Rani Govindaraju, Executive Director of iC2 PrepHouse (a beneficiary for children with low vision), Dr. Wong Meng Ee, Assistant Professor of Early Childhood & Special Needs Education at the National Institute of Education of Nanyang Technological University, and Valerie Cheng, Director for Content & Services of the Public Library Services of the NLB.

The innovative tactile art book contains 23 embossed prints in two-dimensional relief faithfully reproducing writer-aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s original illustrations from The Little Prince, with text in Braille, French and English. This precious and rare limited-edition (1,000 copies worldwide only) art book for collectors was created by blind artist and specialised publisher Claude Garrandes, with the support of the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation to make the drawings of the 1943 classic accessible to visually-challenged people for the first time.

Watch the presentation video of this art book:

The pioneering art book is also designed to become a great tool for conducting educational workshops as a sharing and transmission platform between sighted and blind persons – human relations so dear to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, echoing his famous quote in The Little Prince: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The book donation was made possible thanks to the precious and generous support of The Fullerton Heritage Singapore, which had organised a charity sale of the Foundation’s merchandise during The Little Prince Art Collection exhibition, by Arnaud Nazare-Aga and PAJ’Art Studio, that was a highlight of the 2015 edition of the French Cultural Festival “Voilah!” presented by the French Embassy, the French Institute and the French Chamber of Commerce in Singapore in May 2015.

It is our hope that these gifts will serve as an inspiration to visually-impaired children and adults in Singapore so that they too will see the beautiful things in life with their hearts in the spirit of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s masterpiece.

For further information:
www.ic2.com.sg
www.savh.org.sg
www.nlb.gov.sg

Photos :

1- Valerie Cheng, Yeo Ando, Arnaud Nazare-Aga, Nicolas Delsalle-Mun, H.E. Benjamin Dubertret, Jamuna Rani Govindaraju, Dr. Wong Meng Ee, Giovanni Viterale and Guillaume Levy-Lambert.
2- Giovanni Viterale, H.E. Benjamin Dubertret and Nicolas Delsalle-Mun.
3- H.E. Benjamin Dubertret, Nicolas Delsalle-Mun and Dr. Wong Meng Ee.
4- Presentation of the tactile edition of the drawings of The Little Prince by Claude Garrandes.