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Peter Pan in Scarlet |  |
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Peter Pan in Scarlet | |
Fighting off fierce competition from over 100 other writers, Geraldine McCaughrean has been commissioned to write this official sequel. In her entry, the judges found something that captured the elusive spirit of the original whilst offering a fresh and astounding creative response. Like Barrie's story, it will appeal to readers the world over. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
作者简介 Winner of Whitbread Children's Book Prize (three times)
Winner of Carnegie Medal
Winner of Smarties Bronze Award (four times)
Winner of Blue Peter Book of the Year Award
Winner of Guardian Children's Fiction Award --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
媒体推荐 From Booklist
As part of the centenary celebration of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan, London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, to which Barrie bequeathed legal ownership of Peter, held a contest to determine who would write Peter's sequel. McCaughrean won, and the result is this whirling, ingenious, and chaotic puzzle.
From the first scene, readers will see that some ominous clouds are breaking up Neverland's eternal sunshine. Picking up from the original book's final chapter, McCaughrean presents the lost boys as old boys, grown into professionals with families. The only evidence of their youthful adventures with Peter are recent nightmares, which leave material evidence--cutlasses, swords, and top hats--in their beds. "Dreams are leaking out of Neverland," says Mrs. Wendy. It's clear that something is amiss, and the only way to set things right is to travel back to Peter's magical land.
So the adventures begin, and here they are far more frenzied than in the original, with even more dreamlike, nonsensical connections between scenes. Peter, Wendy, and the explorers travel through an increasingly hostile and chilly Neverland, trying to determine what's wrong (Hook is back, among other threats). But the action is so relentlessly furious that the story quickly becomes convoluted, and readers who haven't read Barrie's work will most likely be lost.
As in her previous, highly accomplished interpretations of classic text, such as this year's Cyrano, McCaughrean stays close to the original. Many of the details here are just the same, from the lost boys' cozy underground lair to the magic ingredient that makes flying possible. Unfortunately, in her faithfulness to Barrie's work, McCaughrean includes mention of war paint and scalping and stereotypes that will certainly disturb modern readers. In today's cultural climate, it's jarring to read the word redskins in a contemporary children's book, yet here it appears frequently. Why perpetuate racist terms from another era? McCaughrean does soften the original's strong gender roles. In the passage from the real world to Neverland, one of the lost boys becomes a girl, and fathers make some cameo appearances, widening one of the most overwhelming and confusing themes in both new and old tellings: the comfort and suffocation of a mother's love. The deep, philosophical undercurrent of classical themes and texts slows the plot's breakneck speed somewhat, and it is older readers, including high-schoolers (and adults), who will most likely catch the literary and historical references and sophisticated humor and enjoy debating the questions about free will and imagination, paradise lost, and how we shape our identities.
Despite its chaos, McCaughrean's story, with its whimsical, delicious language and wildly creative scenes will capture readers who know and love Barrie's original. Consider this sequel for your collections, but consider, too, all the questions it raises: How do we handle outdated stereotypes in classics? Are there limits to what an author can borrow and discard in retelling beloved stories? Why has the original Peter Pan endured? Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Tony DiTerlizzi on Illustrating the Cover for Peter Pan in Scarlet
I grew up with J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy and later read Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens which was illustrated by the great turn-of-the-century artist, Arthur Rackham. Peter's carefree spirit and nature is what I adored as a child and long for now as an adult. And these are the feelings I tried to convey into my rendition of the boy-who-would-not-grow-up.
In working on an image for the American jacket of this authorized sequel, I went through many designs trying to capture the spirit of the 100-year-old character while making him intriguing to the readers of today. This, of course, is much easier said than done.
Many of us have an idea of what Peter Pan should look like based on stage plays, movies, and the myriad of illustrated books, but in actuality both J. M. Barrie and Geraldine McCaughrean describe very few of his physical features. This opens up a lot of room for visual interpretation for an illustrator, however anything too severe in redesign would lead to confusion of identifying who this iconic and (dare I say) mythic character is. So I tried to breathe some new life into his appearance, but still remain faithful to the Peter Pan we all know and love.
--Tony DiTerlizzi
