Children’s Classic Read October
“Peter Pan” is a classic tale enjoyed by children for more than 100 years, although these days, it is better known through various movie adaptions that have been made from it. And yet, as they say, the ‘book is better than the movie.’ Why? Because movie makers are notorious for making changes to the books they are based on, and these changes tend to take away from the magic the author poured into the original. It is unfortunately the case that with “Peter Pan,” even the book has been adapted many times, too.
“Peter Pan” was originally published in 1911 by J. M. Barrie with the title, “Peter and Wendy.”
Peter and Wendy is J. M. Barrie’s most famous work, in the form of a 1904 play and a 1911 novel.
Barrie created Peter Pan in stories he told to the sons of his friend Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, with whom he had forged a special relationship. Mrs. Llewelyn Davies’s death from cancer came within a few years after the death of her husband. Barrie was named as co-guardian of the boys and unofficially adopted them. The character’s name comes from two sources: Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of the boys, and Pan, the mischievous Greek god of the woodlands. Andrew Birkin has suggested that the inspiration for the character was Barrie’s elder brother David, whose death in a skating accident at the age of fourteen deeply affected their mother. According to Birkin, the death was “a catastrophe beyond belief, and one from which she never fully recovered. If Margaret Ogilvy [Barrie’s mother as the heroine of his 1896 novel of that title] drew a measure of comfort from the notion that David, in dying a boy, would remain a boy for ever, Barrie drew inspiration.
This was a lovely read. So much better than I imagined and so much more than the Peter Pan book I read and way more rich than the Disney version. I highly recommend reading it.
