1 Famous Last Words

CLASSIC STNWSS Peter Pan Retold from the J. M. Barrie original

CHAPTER 1 Famous Last Words All children grow up. All except one. Wendy learned this when she was playing in

the garden one day at the age of two. She brought her mother a flower, and Mrs. Darling hugged her and said, "Oh, why can't you stay like this forever and ever?" Before that day, Wendy didn't realize she wouldn't stay the same. Wendy had two younger brothers, John and Michael. They were growing, too. Mrs. Darling stayed home with the children while Mr. Darling went to work in stocks. His stocks didn't always work for him, however, and so the family had to scrimp and save. They still had a nanny, of course, because all the other families in the neighborhood had one, and Mr. Darling cared very much about keeping up with the neighbors. But the Darlings were poor, and so their nanny was actually just a giant Newfoundland dog named Nana. Nana was an interesting nanny, to say the least. She didn't believe in all this newfangled talk about germs. Sometimes she would lovingly

lick the children right after she licked her own foot. Mr. Darling was ashamed of Nana, and sometimes he was cold to her as a result. He shouldn't have been. She was actually quite a treasure. If the children wandered or dillydallied on their way to school, she would bump them with her big head to get them back on track. She never once forgot John's soccer uniform, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth, instead of a bone, in case of rain. And it did rain quite often in England.

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All in all, the Darlings were a normal, happy English family. Until, that is, the arrival of a boy named Peter Pan. Mrs. Darling had never heard of Peter Pan until one day when she was tidying up her children's minds. Most good mothers do this after their children are asleep—as if minds are drawers and children's memories are underwear and socks that need to be neatly folded and put away. Oh, how Mrs. Darling would wrinkle her forehead sometimes at the sweet things she found in her children's minds, wondering where on earth they had picked them up. These things, she would lay out and lovingly smooth on the bed for the children to slip on first thing in the morning. Other times, however, she found mean or ugly thoughts in her children's sleepy heads. These she would shake out and quickly hide, like something pushed under the bed.