Here are the answers to some common questions about Peter and Wendy that you might find interesting.
Where is the Neverland? What does it look like?
‘Second star to the right, and straight on till morning!’ is Peter’s idea of the directions to the Neverland. The children and Peter seem to take days (and the best part of chapter four) to reach the Neverland, but none of the children are sure exactly how long the journey takes.
The Neverland is different for everyone although it could be that the basic layout such as the mermaid lagoon stays the same but other things change for each visitor, for instance, while the Darlings are there, there is a pet wolf for Wendy and John’s flamingo with the broken leg.
How long do the children spend in the Neverland?
Good question! It doesn’t say exactly how long in the book but we can make a rough guess. When the Darlings go to dinner in chapter two there is snow on the ground, so the Darling children probably fly away in winter. When Liza takes Nana up to the nursery she is bad-tempered because she has been interrupted while making the Christmas puddings. Christmas puddings are traditionally made on Stir-Up Sunday (the last Sunday before Advent), which is at the end of November. When the children are on the pirate ship with Peter at the end of the book he says they’ll reach the Azores in June, so the children are away from their parents for around seven months.
What does Nana look like?
Courtesy of WikiCommons
Nana is a Newfoundland dog, which is a great big fluffy breed of dog that is as lovable and friendly as it is messy and excitable. Some people think they are related to bears because they are so big! In other versions of the story Nana is often a St Bernard, which is similar to a Newfoundland. Both breeds are big, strong and dependable.
How old is Peter?
Peter Pan stays the same no matter how old he gets! Wendy meets him when she is a little girl and he looks the same when they meet many years later when she is grown-up. It’s hard to say when he stopped growing, but J.M. Barrie does say that he has all his baby teeth. Some children start losing their baby teeth at around six years old, but others still have all their first teeth when they are a few years older.
What kind of clock is inside the crocodile?
Clocks come in all different shapes and sizes. In the 1953 Disney film the crocodile swallowed an alarm clock, but J.M. Barrie doesn’t say precisely what kind of clock it is in Peter and Wendy. The tick is loud enough to be heard when the crocodile is stalking Hook, so it is unlikely to be a pocket-watch (worn before wrist watches were invented). A grandfather clock is certainly loud enough, but is far too big to be swallowed by a crocodile! Something like a carriage clock would be more likely, especially as they were designed for travelling and are portable. The only way for anyone on the Neverland to know the exact time is to follow the crocodile and wait for the clock to strike, which seems like a very complicated way of keeping time. In those days clocks were wound up, which explains why the clock stops ticking towards the end of the story – there is no one to wind up the mechanism inside a crocodile’s stomach…
I’ve seen a different version of Peter Pan. Why is Peter and Wendy different? Where did the Peter Pan character come from?
Peter and Wendy is based on stories made up by J.M. Barrie to entertain some children he knew, and Peter appeared in print in some short stories by Barrie before the Peter Pan play was written. There were a great many stories that were made up, far too many to print in one book. Barrie even had to choose which tales to tell at the end of chapter seven.
Often when a book is made into a film, or in this case, a play adapted into a book, things change. Sometimes things that happen in a book are difficult to film or dramatise, and sometimes adaptations are made by different people who bring their own ideas to the story, creating their own special Neverland. Have a look at the About Peter Pan part of the website to find out more!
Do the Piccaninny, Delaware and Huron tribes exist?
Tiger Lily’s Piccaninny tribe is made-up, but the Delaware and Huron are real Native American tribes. The Huron are known as the Wyandot today and originally came from Canada. The Delaware tribe call themselves Lenape and originally lived on the Delaware River.
How long do fairies live?
Peter says fairies don’t live very long – Tinker Bell is gone when Wendy returns to the Neverland after a year – but J.M. Barrie adds that short periods of time seem long to fairies because they are so little. There are a lot of interesting facts about fairies in the book. Wendy says there are always a lot of new fairies because they are born when a new baby laughs for the first time. They are so small that they can only have one feeling at a time and they live in nests among the tree tops. Boy fairies are mauve and girl fairies are white, but then there are blue fairies who don’t know what they are!
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