Peter Pan Book, Which One Is The Original Story, Or Other Recommendations...

[lovesbabysquirmy]

MOST fairytales are actually pretty macabre... 

Snow White: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm053.html

"Then they put a pair of iron shoes into burning coals. They were brought forth with tongs and placed before her. She was forced to step into the red-hot shoes and dance until she fell down dead."

Just as bad in my opinion, is that the Prince fell in love with Snow White in her coffin- believing her to be at that time a DEAD CHILD not much more than the age of 7 or 8 ??

What?! A necrophiliac pedophile?! That's quite disturbing.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah Snow White is just one of those weird stories that you're like, how could anyone TELL this to KIDS!? 
Don't forget, Crazy Stepmother Queen demands that the Huntsman bring back ORGAN MEAT to prove the girl dead, which she then EATS. With salt.

[LadyMoondancer]

I had the original, or one of the original, books by Barrie as a kid.  You can find the text of it here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16/16.txt

I loved it but yeah, it definitely had dark elements.  The primary one I remember being that Peter and the Lost Boys would periodically go and kill the Indians on the island for fun.  Honestly I think "thinning out" the Lost Boys absolutely meant killing them.  Peter Pan is stuck in childhood, and that doesn't just include the fun, joyful parts.  It includes every bad thing that can be meant by the word "childish", including a childish selfishness and lack of regard for others.

It's a really fascinating book from a psychological perspective.  Barrie was an amazing writer.

Here's the last mention of Tinker Bell:

She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but
new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.

"Who is Captain Hook?" he asked with interest when she spoke of the arch
enemy.

"Don't you remember," she asked, amazed, "how you killed him and saved
all our lives?"

"I forget them after I kill them," he replied carelessly.

When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see
her he said, "Who is Tinker Bell?"

"O Peter," she said, shocked; but even when she explained he could not
remember.

"There are such a lot of them," he said. "I expect she is no more."

I expect he was right, for fairies don't live long, but they are so
little that a short time seems a good while to them.

(This was a year after Wendy's original visit to Neverland, I believe.)

[Majesty]

Was that part of the Peter Pan book too or was that a sequel?

[Ponyfan]

Disney paints Neverland as a fun place full of adventures where the characters including Captain Hook never age. It's been a while since I've seen Disney's version but I think when the Darling parents come home and find Wendy sleeping next to the open window Wendy say something like "Look how Peter sails the ship" and the mother and father see the pirate ship in in the sky. The father says "I think I saw that ship a long time ago when I was boy"

But even in Hook some of the characters die and don't come back to life.

Regarding Snow White the evil queen also pulled Snow White corset laces so tight she couldn't breath and tried to use a poisoned hair come n her as well.

Ponyfan

[Pokeyonekenobie]

The original fairy tales are pretty gory.  The step-sisters in Cinderella cut off parts of their feet in order to make the slipper fit.  One cut off her toes and the other cut off her heel (and then Cinderella put it on with no mention of cleaning the blood out of the shoe first).  You don't see that in the Disney version.

I read an analysis of Peter Pan once where the author of the analysis put forth the theory that Peter Pan was an Angel of Death, whose job was to collect children and guide them through Purgatory (Neverland) and on to their eternal rest.  That's why the lost boys didn't stay on the island forever and why Peter never aged or remembered the boys who were gone.  The few children who were returned home to their parents (as the Darling children eventually were) were children who had serious illnesses that could have died (the author suggested plague or influenza being the most likely culprits) but eventually recovered.  I don't remember who wrote the analysis or  where I found it on the internet as I read it about 15 years ago, but it was an interesting (if even more macabre) take on the story.

[Galactica]

The original fairy tales are pretty gory.  The step-sisters in Cinderella cut off parts of their feet in order to make the slipper fit.  One cut off her toes and the other cut off her heel (and then Cinderella put it on with no mention of cleaning the blood out of the shoe first).  You don't see that in the Disney version.

Lets not forget that they also had their eyes pecked out at the end by Cindy's lil bird friends...

[Skeen]

Of all the fairy tales I've read, I think only Rapunzel had a happy ending, but only after the characters went through hell first.  Didn't she and the prince eventually find each other after years apart while he was wandering blind and she lived in a desert with their children? 

EDIT:  Oh, Majesty, one book I remember liking as a child was The One Hundred and One Dalmatians.  I don't remember the author but it was so much better than the movie to me. 

[Pokeyonekenobie]

The author of 101 Dalmatians is Dodie Smith.  I really enjoyed the book.  There's also a sequel called Twilight Barking, which I haven't read yet but it's on my list.

[Majesty]

OK so I was completely lost looking for a version on amazon.  I knew I wanted hardcover but there were all these different versions.  I don't care that much for a picture book, I prefer to read and see the pictures in my mind as I read.

I ended up choosing this version:

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I do have a question, what's Peter Pan and Wendy and Peter Pan In Kensington Garden?

Also, something I can't understand is why so many people recommend reading this book to their kids.  I saw lots of reviews saying this book is great for kids but it seems to be morbid and depressing.  Maybe that's only for adults where kids see the adventure and fantasy...?

[prancingstag]

I find Peter Pan to be a great read exactly because it's a little morbid and young kids have a keen moral compass. When Peter is cruel or neglectful, or selfish, or puts others in danger, they will cry out "but that's wrong!" Rather than pandering to niceness or teaching/preaching to them something they already know, a lot of older fiction will challenge the reader to find their own way or to form an opinion/response by presenting material that they may not be totally ok with. Peter Pan is a magical adventure that lights up the imagination, but it's also a great source for lightly discussing morality and empathy in a way that kids can engage with and think about on their own level.

[LadyMoondancer]

I agree with prancingstag.  Kids realize early on that there's bad in the world.  I think they are relieved to find acknowledgement of it in their books and shows.  (For a modern example, "A Series of Unfortunate Events".)  I felt more respected by books like that.  I read Peter Pan as a kid and a lot of other books with depressing or morbid themes, and I enjoyed them.

Sidenote on fairy tales like Snow White and so on, real fairy tales like the ones passed on orally . . . those were not specifically intended for children, they were told to / for the whole village.  Later, after they were "collected" by researchers like the Grimms, the Victorians started treating them as stories for children, which is why they started getting censored.  But if you're looking at the originals they are not only violent, but sometimes outright pornographic.  Like there was a Russian folktale where a witch gave a man a magic ring that made, uh . . . a part of him . . . grow ridiculously long and his wife ends up stranded on top of it miles in the air.

Yeeeeah, the Victorians left that one out of their books.

[Pokeyonekenobie]

When you look at the history of Children's Literature, you have to realize that the first book actually written with children as the intended audience was Treasure Island in 1882.  (That's not to say that other books we consider children's literature, like Alice in Wonderland and Gulliver's Travels, weren't written before that, they just weren't specifically intended for children.)  So anything that came before that (as most fairy tales did) didn't care to "bleach" the information for children because children weren't really considered a viable audience.  Their parents were the ones who would have money to buy written materials (assuming that they could even read to begin with) so why pander to children?  It was only after education started becoming a priority for the young that publishers cared about what they were reading.  So by the time that JM Barrie was writing Peter Pan in the early 1900s society hadn't decided that certain situations and  behaviors were inappropriate for children to be exposed to.  They knew that life wasn't all pretty rainbows and apologies from people who hurt your feel-bads so they added things in their books to prepare children for times when life just isn't pretty.  That's why those books have survived as "classics" where other books have come and gone and nobody remembers them, they just end up at thrift stores or antique stores and still nobody reads them.