All children, except one, grow up …

_Elsa_

Santa continues telling them about the author and how he wrote the story.

“Oh look, there’s a picture of Neverland,” exclaims Tiffi. “I just found it on my phone.”

‘All children, except one, grow up. When J.M. Barrie wrote that line about Peter Pan in 1911, it was generally taken as the expression of a beautiful and melancholy fantasy: Children are so lovely and so innocent that it seems a shame that they have to stop being children eventually. Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up, is the expression of the dream that they may not have to, and as such he is both beautiful and tragic.

J.M. Barrie began the story of Peter Pan in his 1902 novel The Little White Bird. It’s the semi-autobiographical tale of a man becoming enamored of a little boy who he wants to steal away from his mother; in order to befriend the child, he makes up the story of Peter Pan, the fairy/bird/baby who lives in London’s Kensington Gardens.

Peter Pan is a week-old baby when he leaves home, and he never ages past that marker. He believes that his mother will always leave the window open for him, so he plays gleefully with the fairies and the birds without fear of losing her affection, but when he finally makes up his mind to go back to her, he finds that it’s too late: The windows are barred, and his mother is cuddling another baby. Her love was conditional after all, and now she’s replaced him. It’s a portrait of Peter Pan that’s much more tragic than the iconic portrait to come.

The whole thing was based on Barrie’s own relationship with George Llewelyn Davies, a 5-year-old boy he met in Kensington Gardens when he was 37 (Barrie’s dog, the basis for Nana, ran right up to him), and for whom he nursed a deep affection. Barrie was soon to develop a similarly deep and jealous friendship with George’s four little brothers: John, Michael, Nicholas, and Peter, the last of whom would ultimately share his name with Peter Pan.

In 1904, the story became a play: Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up. And in 1911, Barrie turned the play into a book, originally titled Peter and Wendy but soon to become known as Peter Pan. That’s the book we usually think of when we talk about “the original book of Peter Pan,” although it’s several steps removed from “original.”

The Peter Pan of both book and play retains the tragic backstory of the Peter Pan of The Little White Bird, but he is no longer confined to Kensington Gardens. Now, he has all of Neverland to play in, and pirates to fight, and Lost Boys to play with, and Wendy Darling and all of her descendants to transform into mothers to replace his original, inferior mother. He is no longer a tragic week-old baby left to fend for himself, but a gleeful, delighted school-aged sprite, forever crowing, “Oh, the cleverness of me!”

Peter Pan became an icon, but the Llewelyn Davies children lived short and tragic lives. George died at 21 as a soldier during World War I in 1915. Michael was just shy of his 21st birthday when he drowned in 1921, in what is widely believed to have been a suicide. John died of lung disease in 1959, at age 65. Peter, who called Peter Pan "that terrible masterpiece,” died of suicide in 1960, at age 63. Only Nicholas, the one who called Barrie “an innocent,” survived until he died of natural causes in 1980, at age 77.

Barrie himself died of pneumonia at age 77, in 1937. But he had been devastated by George and Michael’s deaths years earlier. He had come to think of Peter Pan less as a celebration of the childhood innocence of his young friends and more as a referendum on himself. “It is as if long after writing ‘P. Pan’ its true meaning came to me,” he wrote in a notebook. “Desperate attempt to grow up but can’t.” (Source)

“That is an awesome story,” Chewy says. “Hey I’d like to be like him. I don’t want to grow up ….. I don’t want to go to school…………”. 

Tiffi and Elsa start laughing at Chewy’s behavior. Elsa tells him that there is a big difference and looks up on Google to learn more about childlike to share with Chewy. 

Let’s continue - Being childlike can be fun!

Start at the beginning – Elsa learns how to play again