If you want more magic in your life, I recommend going straight to the source of a classic literary novel, where the use of magic has become famous in our culture. I especially recommend “Peter Pan,” for this after buying a copy from a specialty store that sprinkles “pixie dust” into your gift bags, because then a form of magic specific to the novel will get all over your fingers as you read the golden tipped pages.
Most discover Peter Pan, who's become an icon through the Disney film, another film adaptation or having seen the play. There is a beauty in discovering the original novel however, and a handful of moments in “Peter and Wendy” will break your heart as the story unfolds.
1. The entire first paragraph
The novel begins on a more or less sad note. Wendy is happily being a two-year-old when her mother (and then the author) reminds the reader that childhood is inevitably temporary.
2. The foreshadowing that the children are going to abandon their parents
Michael had nearly cried. “Nobody wants me,” he said, and of course [Mrs. Darling] the lady in evening-dress could not stand that.
“I do,” she said, “I so want a third child.”
“Boy or girl?” asked Michael, not too hopefully.
“Boy.”
Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana to recall now, but not so little if that was to be Michael’s last night in the nursery.
3. When Mr. Darling plays an awful trick on Nana
“Nana, good dog,” he said, patting her, “I have put a little milk into your bowl, Nana.”
Nana wagged her tail, ran to the medicine, and began lapping it. Then she gave Mr. Darling such a look; not an angry look: she showed him the great red tear that makes us so sorry for noble dogs, and crept into her kennel.
4. The fact that the stars are personified, but cannot take 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.
5. When Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana hurry upstairs hoping to stop their children from leaving but are too late
“The birds were flown.”
6. When Peter is super brave even though he’s likely about to die
A tremor ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was… with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, “To die will be an awfully big adventure."
7. Peter’s tragic backstory
Spoiler alert! Peter couldn’t fly back home like the Darling children because when first returning home after months and months, the window was barred and another boy was sleeping in his bed.
8. When Tinker Bell drank poison to save Peter’s life
You the reader can save her though! Clap your hands if you believe in fairies.
9. When the Darling children finally do come home
The children waited for [Mrs. Darling's] cry of joy, but it did not come. She saw them, but she did not believe they were there. You see, she saw them in their beds so often in her dreams that she thought this was just the dream hanging around her still.
10. When the Darling children finally do come home and Peter Pan watches in through the window
“George, George,” she cried when she could speak; and Mr. Darling woe to share her bliss, and Nana came rushing in. There could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except a strange boy who was starring in at the window. He 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.
11. When Wendy grew up
Peter returns for Wendy one spring-cleaning and she said apologetically, "I can't come... I have forgotten how to fly.” The narrator of the story, however, tells us we “need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up.”
