Raph's Girl
10-01-2006, 09:39 PM
John has discovered a cutlass in his bed; the twins are inexplicably covered in war paint — and a snapping crocodile is terrorizing the members of the gentlemen's club.
Wendy, always the most astute of Peter Pan's friends, knows what this means. "Something is wrong in Neverland, gentlemen," she announces. "And that is why we must go back."
And so begins another adventure with the impudent boy who never grew up: Oct. 5 sees the publication around the world of "Peter Pan in Scarlet," the authorized sequel by award-winning British writer Geraldine McCaughrean.
The plot is being kept a secret until publication day, but London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for children, which owns the Peter Pan copyright and commissioned the sequel, is promising another tale of excitement and derring-do, featuring all the original's favorite characters. Royalties will be split between the hospital and McCaughrean.
"I wanted to extend the life and usefulness of Barrie's boy," said McCaughrean, who beat nearly 200 other entries in a competition to choose an author for the sequel. "The book was not hard to write because Peter really got a grip on me."
The book has already been so sold in more than 30 countries from Japan to Estonia to Canada. Advance sales are so brisk that the book is already being reprinted in Britain and the United States, where the first print run alone was 200,000, according to Emma Dryden, who edited the book for Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
"Numbers like these really do compare with some of the finest commercial and fantasy fiction in recent years," Dryden said.
McCaughrean, 55, has already done more than 40 media interviews in Britain alone and on Oct. 20 she begins a 12-day publicity tour on the east coast of the United States.
To whet appetites, the publishers have released the first chapter of the 275-page book, which has a dashing scarlet cover showing Peter clad in a waistcoat of vivid red leaves.
Twenty years after their original adventure, the children who first accompanied Peter to Neverland are all grown up: the balding John is married with children, Tootles is a judge, Curly a doctor and Slightly is now The Honorable Slightly, having married a titled lady.
All are having disturbing dreams of Neverland, and waking to find unexpected objects — a candle, a bow, a top hat — in their beds.
Neverland, concludes the sensible Wendy, is "rubbing against the Here and Now, wearing holes in the fabric in between." And so the adventure begins.
McCaughrean, who already has 130 children's books under her belt, shows a deftness and assurance that allow the reader to slip seamlessly from Barrie's original to "Peter Pan in Scarlet."
She has dispensed with Barrie's Edwardian flourishes of language, but has maintained his characters, his witty style — including the dry asides to adults that so enchanted Barrie's readers — and the original's looming sense of menace.
Like the original, the sequel is pitched at readers aged 8 to adult.
"I didn't want to bring the book right up to date. I didn't want to do a modern Peter Pan," said McCaughrean, whose books, "The Pirate's Son" and "The Kite Rider," won the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults in 1998 and 2003.
"Children like other-world adventures — they like going there. Children like to be taken out of themselves," she said.
"She's done a brilliant job — J. M. Barrie would definitely have approved," said David Barrie, the famous author's great-great-nephew. "The original worked on so many levels; there were so many subtexts that appeal to people of different ages. Geraldine has taken J. M. Barrie's inspiration and moved it into a new area."
McCaughrean was careful not to give away too many secrets about the plot as she talked to The Associated Press at her home in the hill-ringed village of Great Shefford near Wantage, 80 miles west of London.
"There is a secret to do with the past," she said, cryptically. "In Neverland, time has moved on, it's not perpetual summer any more. That makes the weather more extreme."
A slim, gentle woman with a sparkling wit, McCaughrean also reveals that this time the action moves beyond the confines of the Netherwood and the lagoon, where the original was set. She said she felt justified in the change of scene because "Neverland has no fixed size or shape."
There are also fairies, pirates, children — and a circus — "because children love animals and I felt we needed more of them."
Wendy, she said, is "a bit more central to the story" this time — "I wanted to make her more a prime mover."
In fact, there are two girls on the trip this time; the other, McCaughrean said, "fulfills the role of the helpless female who hangs on Peter's every word."
And what about Hook, last seen dropping into the open jaws of a crocodile?
"I don't do ghosts," she said. "But Hook does figure, so does (the fairy) Tink, but she's not there at the beginning." New characters include another adult and a fairy.
Other authors who wrote sequels to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" and Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" have been criticized for parody or pastiche — and for trying to cash in on the big literary names. Others have attempted sequels — and even prequels — to Peter Pan but McCaughrean's is the first officially sanctioned follow-up.
"This is such a good cause and that is the only premise on which I would have done it," she said. "I don't feel any sense of guilt."
The book launches Thursday at a party at Kensington Palace hosted by its British publishers Oxford University Press and the Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Caroline Horn, children's news editor at the British industry publication, "The Bookseller," said the book has a good chance of becoming a hit. "These things are hard to judge because there are a lot of strong children's books coming out in October, including 'Stoneheart' by Charlie Fletcher," she said.
"But this is a perfect Christmas book, and given the support of Great Ormond Street and the nostalgia surrounding Peter Pan, it should do very well."
The U.S. edition will have a book jacket illustration by Tony DiTerlizzi, co-creator of the best-selling "Spiderwick Chronicles," and black and white illustrations in the text by Scott M. Fischer. The British version has evocative black and white pictures by
David Wyatt.
Sir James Matthew Barrie bequeathed the copyright to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1929, and it receives royalties from plays, books and other items that mention Peter Pan. Over the years, this has raised millions of pounds for the hospital. However, Barrie expressed the wish that the amount should never be revealed, so the hospital does not give figures.
It currently needs more than $281 million to replace dilapidated 1930s buildings, and for new equipment, medical research and providing accommodations for parents of young patients.
The Peter Pan character first appeared in a 1902 novel, "The Little White Bird," and the play that made him famous premiered at the Duke of York's theater in London two years later. Barrie turned the story into a children's book in 1911 and its combination of mystery and magic made it a children's favorite.
There are now over 100 professional and amateur productions of the play of Peter Pan in its many forms, from the original to adaptations such as musicals, ballet, ice-skating shows, pantos, puppet shows, not only in Britain but also in the United States and Europe.
There have been animated and live action films made of the story, including the famous Disney cartoon from 1953 and feature movies such as
Steven Spielberg's "Hook," in 1991.
Great Ormond Street also receives some of the proceeds from two American prequels, "Peter and the Starcatchers" and "Peter and the Shadow Thieves," which sold well in the United States.
Barrie, who never grew beyond five feet in height, married Mary Ansell, but his relationship with the actress ended in divorce and produced no children. He later adopted the Llewelyn Davis boys when their parents died of cancer, and made no secret of the fact that he often preferred the company of children to adults.
McCaughrean, a former teacher and journalist who has garnered three of Britain's prestigious Whitbread literary awards, identifies in some ways with Peter's Scottish-born creator.
"We both understand that children need this other world, they need to get away from being small and subjugated," she said. "And we both love fairies and the magical."
"But where I differ from Barrie is that I don't believe that life goes downhill after childhood."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061001/ap_en_ot/peter_pan_1
Wendy, always the most astute of Peter Pan's friends, knows what this means. "Something is wrong in Neverland, gentlemen," she announces. "And that is why we must go back."
And so begins another adventure with the impudent boy who never grew up: Oct. 5 sees the publication around the world of "Peter Pan in Scarlet," the authorized sequel by award-winning British writer Geraldine McCaughrean.
The plot is being kept a secret until publication day, but London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for children, which owns the Peter Pan copyright and commissioned the sequel, is promising another tale of excitement and derring-do, featuring all the original's favorite characters. Royalties will be split between the hospital and McCaughrean.
"I wanted to extend the life and usefulness of Barrie's boy," said McCaughrean, who beat nearly 200 other entries in a competition to choose an author for the sequel. "The book was not hard to write because Peter really got a grip on me."
The book has already been so sold in more than 30 countries from Japan to Estonia to Canada. Advance sales are so brisk that the book is already being reprinted in Britain and the United States, where the first print run alone was 200,000, according to Emma Dryden, who edited the book for Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
"Numbers like these really do compare with some of the finest commercial and fantasy fiction in recent years," Dryden said.
McCaughrean, 55, has already done more than 40 media interviews in Britain alone and on Oct. 20 she begins a 12-day publicity tour on the east coast of the United States.
To whet appetites, the publishers have released the first chapter of the 275-page book, which has a dashing scarlet cover showing Peter clad in a waistcoat of vivid red leaves.
Twenty years after their original adventure, the children who first accompanied Peter to Neverland are all grown up: the balding John is married with children, Tootles is a judge, Curly a doctor and Slightly is now The Honorable Slightly, having married a titled lady.
All are having disturbing dreams of Neverland, and waking to find unexpected objects — a candle, a bow, a top hat — in their beds.
Neverland, concludes the sensible Wendy, is "rubbing against the Here and Now, wearing holes in the fabric in between." And so the adventure begins.
McCaughrean, who already has 130 children's books under her belt, shows a deftness and assurance that allow the reader to slip seamlessly from Barrie's original to "Peter Pan in Scarlet."
She has dispensed with Barrie's Edwardian flourishes of language, but has maintained his characters, his witty style — including the dry asides to adults that so enchanted Barrie's readers — and the original's looming sense of menace.
Like the original, the sequel is pitched at readers aged 8 to adult.
"I didn't want to bring the book right up to date. I didn't want to do a modern Peter Pan," said McCaughrean, whose books, "The Pirate's Son" and "The Kite Rider," won the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults in 1998 and 2003.
"Children like other-world adventures — they like going there. Children like to be taken out of themselves," she said.
"She's done a brilliant job — J. M. Barrie would definitely have approved," said David Barrie, the famous author's great-great-nephew. "The original worked on so many levels; there were so many subtexts that appeal to people of different ages. Geraldine has taken J. M. Barrie's inspiration and moved it into a new area."
McCaughrean was careful not to give away too many secrets about the plot as she talked to The Associated Press at her home in the hill-ringed village of Great Shefford near Wantage, 80 miles west of London.
"There is a secret to do with the past," she said, cryptically. "In Neverland, time has moved on, it's not perpetual summer any more. That makes the weather more extreme."
A slim, gentle woman with a sparkling wit, McCaughrean also reveals that this time the action moves beyond the confines of the Netherwood and the lagoon, where the original was set. She said she felt justified in the change of scene because "Neverland has no fixed size or shape."
There are also fairies, pirates, children — and a circus — "because children love animals and I felt we needed more of them."
Wendy, she said, is "a bit more central to the story" this time — "I wanted to make her more a prime mover."
In fact, there are two girls on the trip this time; the other, McCaughrean said, "fulfills the role of the helpless female who hangs on Peter's every word."
And what about Hook, last seen dropping into the open jaws of a crocodile?
"I don't do ghosts," she said. "But Hook does figure, so does (the fairy) Tink, but she's not there at the beginning." New characters include another adult and a fairy.
Other authors who wrote sequels to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" and Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" have been criticized for parody or pastiche — and for trying to cash in on the big literary names. Others have attempted sequels — and even prequels — to Peter Pan but McCaughrean's is the first officially sanctioned follow-up.
"This is such a good cause and that is the only premise on which I would have done it," she said. "I don't feel any sense of guilt."
The book launches Thursday at a party at Kensington Palace hosted by its British publishers Oxford University Press and the Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Caroline Horn, children's news editor at the British industry publication, "The Bookseller," said the book has a good chance of becoming a hit. "These things are hard to judge because there are a lot of strong children's books coming out in October, including 'Stoneheart' by Charlie Fletcher," she said.
"But this is a perfect Christmas book, and given the support of Great Ormond Street and the nostalgia surrounding Peter Pan, it should do very well."
The U.S. edition will have a book jacket illustration by Tony DiTerlizzi, co-creator of the best-selling "Spiderwick Chronicles," and black and white illustrations in the text by Scott M. Fischer. The British version has evocative black and white pictures by
David Wyatt.
Sir James Matthew Barrie bequeathed the copyright to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1929, and it receives royalties from plays, books and other items that mention Peter Pan. Over the years, this has raised millions of pounds for the hospital. However, Barrie expressed the wish that the amount should never be revealed, so the hospital does not give figures.
It currently needs more than $281 million to replace dilapidated 1930s buildings, and for new equipment, medical research and providing accommodations for parents of young patients.
The Peter Pan character first appeared in a 1902 novel, "The Little White Bird," and the play that made him famous premiered at the Duke of York's theater in London two years later. Barrie turned the story into a children's book in 1911 and its combination of mystery and magic made it a children's favorite.
There are now over 100 professional and amateur productions of the play of Peter Pan in its many forms, from the original to adaptations such as musicals, ballet, ice-skating shows, pantos, puppet shows, not only in Britain but also in the United States and Europe.
There have been animated and live action films made of the story, including the famous Disney cartoon from 1953 and feature movies such as
Steven Spielberg's "Hook," in 1991.
Great Ormond Street also receives some of the proceeds from two American prequels, "Peter and the Starcatchers" and "Peter and the Shadow Thieves," which sold well in the United States.
Barrie, who never grew beyond five feet in height, married Mary Ansell, but his relationship with the actress ended in divorce and produced no children. He later adopted the Llewelyn Davis boys when their parents died of cancer, and made no secret of the fact that he often preferred the company of children to adults.
McCaughrean, a former teacher and journalist who has garnered three of Britain's prestigious Whitbread literary awards, identifies in some ways with Peter's Scottish-born creator.
"We both understand that children need this other world, they need to get away from being small and subjugated," she said. "And we both love fairies and the magical."
"But where I differ from Barrie is that I don't believe that life goes downhill after childhood."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061001/ap_en_ot/peter_pan_1