Reviews - Peter Pan and Wendy

5.95k reviews for:

The pacing of this book was so strange and this book definitely didn't age well. The book is very racist and misogynistic as it was written in the early 1940s. That being said I do love the way this book ends!! The ending breaks your heart and puts it back together in a beautiful way.

wendysreadingnow's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark inspiring fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Loveable characters: Yes

rosalie362819's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

peter pan favourite quotes

“AIl children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this forever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.”

“He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.”

“Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little ones still wonder.”

“Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys."

“If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become

so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing.”

“Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter. He often met it, but he always forgot it. I suppose that was the real difference between him and all the rest.”

“Everything just as it should be, you see. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked. So great indeed was their faith in a mother's love that they felt they could afford to be callous for a bit longer.”

“They knew in what they called their hearts that one can get on quite well without a mother, and that it is only the mothers who think you can't.”

“‘But, my dear madam, it is ten days till Thursday week; so that by telling you what's what, we can save you ten days of unhappiness.’

‘Yes, but at what a cost! By depriving the children of ten minutes of delight.’

‘Oh, if you look at it in that way!’

‘What other way is there in which to look at it?’”

“There could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except a little boy who was staring in at the window. He had had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be forever barred.”