Customer Reviews

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens : Peter and Wendy (Oxford World's Classics)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is very imaginative and well written. James Barrie tells the history side of Peter Pan that most people do not know about. Each chapter tells a different story about Peter Pan's life in the garden. There are stories about Peter Pan living in the trees with the birds, to stories about how the fairies trick the humans who come to visit Kensington Gardens. This book is both funny and sad at parts, and will make you wonder if you were actually owned by a bird at sometime!

If you buy this book, definately get an illistrated edition! The fairy images are gorgeous and worth treasuring. The story itself is beautiful: How Peter fell out of his tram, was taught by the birds to fly and finally returned home to find the window locked to him.

Hmm...., Peter and Wendy is obviously a five star book all the way, but what about Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens? Well, it's not really a complete book, first off. It's just a large section taken out of an earlier Barrie book titled The Little White Bird. So its very fragmented. Second, since it's more of a springboard the for ideas that formed the Peter Pan play than anything else, it repeats quite a bit of what we have already seen multiple times in many of the famous Peter Pan adaptations.

Even so, I did get a lot of enjoyment out of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Aside from the first chapter (which isn't much fun if you haven't been to the gardens), I was quite entertained. Barrie's theory that people are born as birds and then turn into humans afterward is pretty wild, and I loved Peter's interaction with the girl who was captured by the fairies. Peter thought he played games the same way all real boys did but just embarassed the heck out of himself, throwing the hula-hoops or whatever those things were in the water. Poor guy.

So all in all, you have a great introduction followed by a good book fragment and topped off with an all-time classic. Not a bad purchase at all.

If you've seen Peter Pan in theater and film, you might think that you know him.

If that is the breadth of your exposure, then you do not.

As it turns out, J.M. Barrie's Novelization of the classic play, told in "Peter Pan and Wendy," exposes to us a darker Neverland, with a self-centered and often borderline evil Pan, who serves his best interests first and only, almost without fail. The often humorous Tinkerbell is similiarly darker, displaying a genuine hate for Wendy among others.

That is not to say it isn't good. It is - terribly so. The believability of Pan and the characters around him is excellent, particularly given each one's specific backgrounds and situations, which Barrie provides for the reader in great detail.

"Peter Pan and Wendy" is a quick and interesting read, and read it you should, for it's literary importance shouldn't be overlooked.

"Peter Pan in Kinsington Gardens" is, regrettably, skippable. You may have never heard of this story, and there is a pretty good reason for that, although it provides readers with Peter's upbringing in the land of faeries, it is rather slow-moving and unnecessary background for the main event of the other story.

I've been working on a piece of writing for a long time now, based on the Pan myth. I thought I knew it--but no. This book, prepared with the excellent scholarship you'd expect of Oxford--gives background and original text of Barrie's writings that is incredible.