Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie)

Based on Barrie's 1904 play, the book Peter Pan (1911, and originally called Peter and Wendy) tells the story familiar to most due to Disney's 1953 movie by the same name.  Peter Pan is the boy who never grows up, living in Neverland and having constant adventures with fairies (the most notable being Tinkerbell), pirates (Captain Hook, the nemesis), indians, mermaids, an alligator who has it out for Hook, and the lost boys- a small group of children who lost their mothers.  The Darling children (Wendy, John, and Michael) get to live with Peter for a time and experience the magic of his island, but eventually elect to return to their normal lives, in London, and grow up, as (almost) all children must.

I first tried reading this book aloud to my three year old daughter, but soon stopped.  This book is intended for older children, and perhaps will be best appreciated by adults.  Reading it just for myself, I loved it.  Peter is childhood personified- fearless, self-centered, boastful, forgetful- and other characters reflect these and other aspects of youth.  The writing is splendid, and the foibles, inconsistencies, or oddities common in both adults and children is depicted marvelously.  At 220 pages, it won't take you long to get through this, and I highly recommend it.  One quote, from here, says it well:

By turns dryly witty, poignantly tragic, exciting, and lyrical, the writing is as brilliant as the story, a perfect distillation of childhood fantasies and adult nostalgia.

Reading this, all at once you long for the innocence and imagination of childhood, yet are content with it being a fleeting stage of life.  Youth is necessary, and yet necessarily temporary.  We want to be Peter Pan, but we want to be him just for a time.  Yet as we gain the insights and abilities that come with maturity, we lose other things, and this book brings these ideas to the forefront- recalling that which was lost.  I came away feeling there was a lot to unpack here, and I'm sure I didn't hit it all.  What I did understand, I enjoyed.  Some racism elements aside (towards indians- sadly common for the time, I dare say), this is a great read.

I'll wrap up with one quote from the novel, referring to how we treat our mothers:

Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time; and then when we have need of special attention [from our mothers] we nobly return for it, confident we shall be embraced instead of smacked.
So great indeed was their faith in a mother's love that they felt they could afford to be callous for a bit longer.

"Callous for a bit longer . . ."  This insight really struck me, showing both how we (as children) treat our parents, and then how we (as humans) treat God.  Not the overall point of the book, but a thought for further reflection nevertheless.  We do tend to abuse the love shown to us.

Rating: A