![]() ![]() I wanted her to take a hand in the adventures, be a bit more of a feminist. She said that she “tried very, very closely to pick up Barrie’s style and mood.” But she added: “I wanted Wendy to be more spunky than she was in the last book. McCaughrean said she didn’t attempt to make “Peter Pan in Scarlet” confirm to modern standards. “If any Lost Boy got too big, Peter culled him.” “It’s quite ruthless, not very politically correct,” she said. “But now I have imagined you here, we can have the best adventures in the world,” he tells his friends. Of course there is Peter, who has still not grown up, and can’t read and write. (Barrie’s original fairy, Tinker Bell, seems to have disappeared.) Fireflyer is a he, an annoying little creature who is always getting in trouble.īut when the voyagers arrive in Neverland, they discover that it has been transformed, the land polluted, the trees autumnal. Of course to return to Neverland they must become children again, and they do, with the aid of a new fairy, Fireflyer. Meanwhile the group is troubled by strange dreams that have been leaking out of Neverland. Nana, the nursemaid dog, is dead, though one of her descendants lives. Wendy is a wife and mother, something of an artistic dilettante who writes poetry. The Lost Boys are the Old Boys, and they and Wendy Darling have grown up. “Peter Pan in Scarlet” takes place in 1926, more than 20 years after Barrie’s play was first produced on the London stage. McCaughrean’s manuscript obtained by The New York Times is more in keeping with the style of Barrie’s educated, British voice, and her Peter is truer to the original: as selfish and egomaniacal as ever. Peter is selfless, heroic and kind.Ī copy of Ms. The Barry-Pearson books take place before Barrie’s story begins, and are contemporary in tone, with plenty of slapstick humor and chase scenes. The second of these, “Peter and the Shadow Thieves,” has sold 350,000 copies since its publication in July. McElderry Books imprint, which is bringing out the book in the United States, said both publishers “wanted people to be literally blown away, to come completely fresh to a new story.”īut the Peter story has already been the subject of scores of editions, comic books, motion pictures, stage plays and animations, as well as two best-selling prequels written by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Emma Dryden, the editor, who is associate publisher of Simon & Schuster’s Margaret K. The publishers have even gone so far as to impose a prepublication embargo on the book, whose author, Geraldine McCaughrean, was chosen in a vigorously publicized 2004 international competition held by Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which holds the British literary rights to the Peter Pan characters.īooksellers and editors receiving galleys have had to sign confidentiality agreements. The Oxford University Press, which is bringing out the book in Britain, is scheduled to release it with a gala party at Kensington Palace. 5 Simon & Schuster, with great fanfare and much promotion, is planning to publish “Peter Pan in Scarlet,” the first “officially sanctioned” sequel to J. ![]()
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