Peter Pan (Dover Children’s Evergreen Classics)

Description

“All children, apart from one, grow up.” Thus begins a great classic of children’s literature that we all take into account that as magical. What we tend to overlook, because the tale of Peter Pan and Neverland has been so relentlessly boiled down, hashed up, and coated in saccharine, is that J.M. Barrie’s original version is also witty, sophisticated, and delightfully abnormal. The Darling children, Wendy, John, and Michael, live a very proper middle-class life in Edwardian London, but they also happen to have a Newfoundland for a nurse. The text is full of such throwaway gems as “Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter Pan when she was tidying up her children’s minds,” and is peppered with deliberately obscure vocabulary including “embonpoint,” “quietus,” and “pluperfect.” Lest we overlook, it was written in 1904, a moderately innocent age in which a plot about abducted children must have seemed more safely fanciful. Also, perhaps, it was an age that expected more of its children’s books, for Peter Pan has a suppleness, lightness, and intelligence that are “literary” in the best sense. In a typical exchange with the dastardly Captain Hook, Peter Pan describes himself as “youth… joy… a little bird that has broken out of the egg,” and the writer interjects: “This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know the least bit who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form.” A book for adult readers-aloud to revel in–and it just might teach young listeners to fly. (Ages 5 and older) –Richard Farr