Peter Pan has a rich history spanning over a hundred years. The likeness of Peter Pan first appeared in print in J.M. Barrie’s book The Little White Bird in 1902 (Tatar xvii). This story inspired Barrie to write the play Peter Pan, Or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up which premiered in 1904 (Tatar xvii), becoming a huge success, and was soon followed by a prequel novella titled Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens in 1906 (Tatar xvii). The novel Peter Pan as we know it today was published by Barrie in 1911, originally called Peter and Wendy (Tatar xvii), however the play itself did not appear in print until 1928, entitled Peter Pan, Or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up (Tartar xvii). While the novelized form of the story was popular, it was in fact the play that had most impact on children (Locke 105).

Peter Pan, both as a play and as a novel is loved by children because Neverland supplies them with a world of childhood imagination and an escape from the adult realm of rules and responsibilities (Lurie 128). The letters children wrote to actress Pauline Chase in 1909 are evidence of Peter’s large youthful audience. Margery wrote “Dear Peter Pan, Do write me a letter all to myself and I will keep it forever. I still love you, last winter I cried because I loved you so” (10). Some children like Barbara frequently apologize for their writing: “I am sorry I am writing so badly but I have only one footstool & a book. I think it was rather unkind of Wendy to take the lost boys away…I have got the ‘Peter-pan picture book’ & like it very much” (33). When Peter Pan originally premiered it was popular because to children he was real, he was someone who they could love, and empathize with, and thus readers of all classes wrote to Case. Peter Pan demanded participation with the text (Pennington 224).
Many children’s literature critics such as Jacqueline Rose often disregard the child reader. Rose, in her book The Case of Peter Pan; Or, The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction claims that Barrie’s story is for adults because it is written by adults and thus uses adult’s language and distances the perception of the child (2). No doubt there are two types of language used in Peter Pan, one being Barrie’s adult language: “[T]he distinction of his demeanor showed him one of different chaste from his crew. A man of indomitable courage” (Barrie 115). This language stands in stark contrast with Barrie’s more elementary narrative voice of a youthful disposition: “He was a little boy and she was a grown up” (Barrie 223). At this point in the text the narrator’s voice takes on the perspective of the child, because he designating Wendy as the “grown up”. This duality of tone suggests that Peter Pan was not written just for adults or children, but for both.

Children, in spite of the complex diction, identified with it, for example, eleven year old Bernard Collins wrote “Peter Pan has a part for everyone- fairies for girls; pirates and Indians for boys, and literary skill, which is very appealing to the grown-ups. A great feature of the last-named is the way the words are put so that a child can understand them; and yet not tiring and babyish to older people” (120). This passage is significant it shows us both what attracted many children to the story, for example its appeal to all ages and genders. It also reminds the adult reader that they cannot assume that children themselves were unable to read the novelized version of Peter Pan, despite its complex prose (Gubar 490).
Soon after Peter and Wendy’s publication, school boards quickly absorbed the text into its curriculum. The school boards however, like Rose, believed the language was too complex for children and thus removed all syntax with strong literary style, all meta-textual references, sexually explicit scenes, and most importantly cut out the presence of an identifiable narrator (Rose 126). Today, Barrie’s text is rarely assigned in middle school and high school curriculum, many of the younger classes teach retold, popularized versions (Holmes 146). Surveying what schools are teaching to children is important to understanding the reception of Peter Pan because it shows that the children are being given access to a censored version of Peter Pan.

Works Cited
Barrie, J. M. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy. Ed. Peter Hollindale. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Print.
Chase, Pauline. Introduction. Peter Pan’s Postbag: Letters to Pauline Chase. London: Heinemann, 1909. Print.
Collins, Bernard. “What the Audience Thinks. ‘Mary Rose’ and ‘Peter Pan’ Prize Competition Results.” Bookman. London: December 1910. 114-122. Print.
Gubar, Marah. “Peter Pan as Children;s Theatre: The Issue of Audience”. The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Literature. Eds. Julia Mickenberg and Lynne Vallone. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Holmes, Martha. “Peter Pan and the Possibilities of Child Literature” Second Star to the Right: Peter Pan in the Popular Imagination. Eds. Allison Kavey and Lester D. Friedman. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009. 131-150. Print.
Locke, Richard. Critical Children: The use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Print.
Lurie, Alison. Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children’s Literature. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990. Print.