With a magic and emotional appeal unmatched by any other story, Barrie’s Peter Pan speaks directly to childhood’s dreams and desires with an imaginative genius that evokes both laughter and tears. Peter, the boy would wouldn’t grow up; Nana, the Darling children’s nurse and pet Newfoundland; deliciously dreadful Captain Hook, who is stalked by a crocodile with a clock in his stomach; and Tinker Bell, “quite a common fairy,” who swears like a sailor and is murderously jealous—these characters of startling originality are rich, funny, mischievously insightful, and a joy to read about again and again. The result is a masterpiece of literature that has been working its timeless wonderment on us since it first appeared.
