Customer Reviews

Peter Pan In Kensington Gardens

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Arthur Rackham (1867 - 1939) is one of the best known illustrators of children's literature, and his Peter Pan is not the Mary Martin teen-ager of stage and Disney. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens is a chubby little seven-day-old baby, sometimes naked, sometimes bundled into a long white night-dress:

"[Peter's] age is one week, and though he was born so long ago he has never had a birthday, nor is there the slightest chance of his ever having one. The reason is that he escaped from being a human when he was seven days old; he escaped by the window and flew back to the Kensington Gardens."

When Peter forgets how to fly, he is trapped on an island in the Serpentine, with only the birds for friends. But the thrushes help him build a boat and when he lands in the Gardens, the fairy queen grants him the privilege of going where ever he chooses.

This book's fifty full-color plates are mainly in sepia tones with occasional notes of color: an old man's moss green cravat; a wash of marigold and bronze at a fairy picnic; the roseate border of Queen Mab's cloak. Rackam's attention to detail was exquisite and there is just enough color to lend his drawings buoyancy. There has never been an artist better equipped to reveal the world of children's stories to us.

This book is a facsimile of the 1906 edition of "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens." As Patricia Horan says in the introduction, "This is not merely a children's book. This is one of the few works of art that may succeed in rescuing us from our adulthood."