Little Princes

Summary of the novel Little Princes

In the novel Little Princes, the author Conor Grennan describes his adventures and life changing experiences while volunteering at an orphanage in Nepal. In the beginning of the story, Conor describes himself as someone who is more interested in partying and enjoying his life than someone who want to give back to the world. He wants to take a trip around the world, but gets a lot of bad reactions from his friends and family. They think that he is wasting his life savings and that he could be making a better choice. He writes, “I soon discovered that such a trip, while sounding extremely cool, also sounded unrepentantly self-indulgent (6). Conor decides that he will go to Nepal at the start of his worldwide adventure to volunteer with orphans, which will convince his doubters that he is doing something meaningful with his life. Conor has no idea that this experience will change his life in many ways. 

            When he arrives at the orphanage he is not very excited to be there. He likes the idea of telling others that he had volunteered but he was not excited to actually do it. He was greeted by the children and then the story really begins. He spends all his time with them, teaching, playing, and caring for them. He begins to understand the story about the civil war in Nepal and how the children are not really orphaned, but how the children’s parents may have been tricked into paying another to take the kids to safety, however, the children were never brought to safety.  When Conor’s 3 months is done at the volunteering  the children being to ask him when he is coming back. He wants to avoid telling them but he decides that he must come back and to them.

            After one year, Conor returns to The Little Prince’s orphanage to volunteer for another few months.  On one day one of the children’s mothers shows up and Conor cannot believe how the children react. They stay away as if they do not know her. Conor’s co-worker explains that the person who stole the children had trained them to tell everyone that his or her parents had died. The problems these children face are much more than being orphans . The kids had to learn to trust the volunteers and also to learn to talk openly about the memories of their families. At this point Conor decides, that he will being to try to reunite the children with their families.

            Finally, Conor must return to the U.S. and get back to “real life”. He finds it hard to forget about the children. When he receives an email from Viva about some unfortunate circumstance, he contact  co-worker Farid and they start a plan to start a non-profit organization to help the lost children in Nepal.  The organization is called “Next Generation Nepal” and  dedicated to helping the children. During this time, Conor also talk with and fall in love with a women named Liz. She visits him often in Nepal.  His last big mission in Nepal involve traveling to local villages with pictures of the children from the orphanage. He meets with families and village elders in hopes of reuniting them. In the end, his organization becomes better and better at finding the families of missing children and  he is group is able to reunite many children with their parents.