Peter Pan
One night Peter Pan, the boy who would never grow up, flies into the Darling children's nursery and takes Wendy, John and Michael to Neverland: mermaids, Lost Boys, and the pirate Captain Hook. By J. M. Barrie (1911). A public-domain classic, from Peter and Wendy.
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How it begins All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!” This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.Of course they lived at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner. Keep reading →About this story
Wendy, John and Michael Darling live in London, and one night a boy who never grew up flies into their nursery looking for his shadow. He takes them to Neverland, where there are pirates, mermaids, and a tribe of lost boys, and where a clock-swallowing crocodile follows Captain Hook.
J. M. Barrie first wrote Peter Pan as a stage play in 1904, and published the story as a novel, Peter and Wendy, in 1911. It is funnier and odder than the film versions, and sadder too, because Barrie is thinking all the time about childhood and what is lost when it ends. In 1929 he gave the rights to Great Ormond Street Hospital, which still benefits from them.
- Themes
- Childhood, growing up, mothers, loss
- Good for
- Reading aloud; adults who want to see what the original book is like
- Worth noticing
- How often the narrator turns to speak to you, and what he says about children.
Chapters
- 1Peter Breaks Through14 min · 14 Oct
- 2The Shadow13 min · 14 Oct
- 3Come Away, Come Away!18 min · 14 Oct
- 4The Flight13 min · 14 Oct
- 5The Island Come True16 min · 14 Oct
- 6The Little House11 min · 14 Oct
- 7The Home Under the Ground11 min · 14 Oct
- 8The Mermaids’ Lagoon17 min · 14 Oct
- 9The Never Bird5 min · 14 Oct
- 10The Happy Home9 min · 14 Oct
- 11Wendy’s Story11 min · 14 Oct
- 12The Children Are Carried Off8 min · 14 Oct
- 13Do You Believe in Fairies?13 min · 14 Oct
- 14The Pirate Ship10 min · 14 Oct
- 15“Hook or Me This Time”14 min · 14 Oct
- 16The Return Home13 min · 14 Oct
- 17When Wendy Grew Up16 min · 14 Oct