I meant to make this post last week, so this is probably a truncated version.

Right after reading Peter Pan, I read Peter Pan in Scarlet. What this is, you see, the Great Osmond Street Children's Hospital (who own the rights to Barrie's famous book/play) commissioned a sequel for the centennial, and received over 200 entries. Peter Pan in Scarlet was the book they chose, and it's excellent. It never shies away from making Pan as strange and sort-of awful, but we get to see him in a not-so-typical situation. The basic premise is that all the Lost Boys grown up in England are having dreams about Neverland, and when they wake remnants come with them. John's wife pulls a saber from under his sheets, and sets off a flintlock pistol when he when she fluffs the pillow. Curly goes to sleep on the train and wakes up with warpaint on.

This book fleshes out many of the characters, though Slightly, my favorite Lost Boy from the original, is a bit of a different character, though the change makes sense. In the new book he's a musician, a clarinet player, who wants to play blues but doesn't feel it's quite respectable. I liked him in the original because he was always making up stories about his life before he was Lost, seeming a natural storyteller -- certainly, none of the other boys show any inclination. He's still artistic, then, in the new book, but it's slanted a little. Still, he's my favorite Lost Boy.

Nibs, who, if I remember, is the only Lost Boy in the Disney adaptation to get anything approaching screentime (though Tootles, I suppose, is present), doesn't come along.

Anyway, this book was quite as stunning and dreamy as the first, even with the modern complicated plot -- if you think about it, the actual plot of Peter Pan isn't so complex, which isn't a problem.