Peter Pan in Scarlet: Geraldine McCaughrean’s Official Sequel Takes Wendy Back to Neverland
Something strange is happening in Neverland. Dreams are leaking out of it: dreams of pirates and mermaids, of war paint and crocodiles, that come true. For Wendy and the Lost Boys, now serious and respectable grown-ups, it is a sign that Peter Pan needs help, so they decide to fly to Neverland again. When they get there, everything has changed, and the dangers they will face are far from being just dreams.
Author: Geraldine McCaughrean; illustrated by David Wyatt
Title: Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006)
Format: English paperback (OUP Oxford), 288 pages
Scope: Official sequel to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0192726218 (ASIN 0192726218)
Relics from Neverland
The novel opens with John Darling and his wife troubled by the vivid, realistic dreams of Neverland that John keeps having. He even wakes to find relics from his childhood stay there: a cutlass, a pistol and so on. The grown-up Lost Boys must find a way to become young enough to fly again.
What Works and What Doesn’t
McCaughrean has absorbed the joy, the effervescent spirit and the humour that made Peter Pan a classic, and she has written a demanding story. But Barrie’s original may have been dark without ever being sad; it was woven from dreams and fairy dust. Here, a scene involving quicksand is all too emblematic.
The journey to the Neverpeak alone is so long and tedious, not to mention exhausting and miserable, that many readers who have stayed with it until then may give up. And Peter now seems like a grumpy old man complaining of aching joints. This forced, joyless march badly needs an injection of happy thoughts.
How the Sequel Was Chosen
In 1929 J.M. Barrie gave the rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, and the royalties have supported it ever since. In 2004 the hospital launched a competition to find an author for an official sequel, asking writers to submit a sample chapter and synopsis. Geraldine McCaughrean won, and the book was published in October 2006 in many countries at once, with illustrations by David Wyatt.
Peter in Hook’s Coat
The title refers to a red coat. Back in Neverland, the grown-up visitors find Peter wearing the scarlet coat of the dead Captain Hook, and as the adventure goes on the coat seems to change him, pulling him towards Hook’s cruelty and pride. A sinister circus man called Ravello and a fairy named Fireflyer join the cast, and the journey takes the old gang across a Neverland that has grown hotter, stranger and more dangerous since their childhood. To return at all, the adults have to make themselves small, a nice idea borrowed from the logic of dreams.
The Author
McCaughrean is one of Britain’s most distinguished children’s writers. She has won the Carnegie Medal twice, for A Pack of Lies (1988) and for Where the World Ends (2018), as well as several Whitbread children’s awards, and she has retold many classics, from Greek myths to Chaucer, for young readers. Her style is rich and playful, closer to Barrie’s own voice than most imitators manage.
A Fair Verdict
The original reviewer admired the book’s spirit and humour but missed Barrie’s lightness, a balanced judgement that many critics shared. Readers who come to it straight after Barrie’s novel Peter and Wendy will get the most from it.
Who Should Read It
It is still worth reading for devoted fans of Barrie who want to know what happened next, and the book has a special place in literary history: it is the only sequel authorised by Great Ormond Street Hospital, which holds the rights to Peter Pan. Just don’t expect the lightness of the original.
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