'Peter Pan' sequel launched worldwide on centenary of creation

by Elodie Mazein

LONDON (AFP) - The first official sequel to Peter Pan, entitled "Peter Pan in Scarlet," hit bookstores in Britain and 30 other countries Thursday, 100 years after Scottish author JM Barrie created the character.

More than 500,000 copies of the work written by Geraldine McCaughrean have been published for the launch in English but also in languages including Basque, Chinese, French, Hebrew and Polish.

Some 200,000 copies are available in the United States and 50,000 in Britain.

"I'm more nervous now that I was when I signed on because I just didn't realize in my ignorance that it was going to be quite that big," said McCaughrean, a British children's author.

"I thought it was a very English kind of a book, possibly American, but not Korean and Russian. It's just very exciting," she told BBC radio.

In the new book, Wendy is now a wife and mother.

"They've grown up.... the first thing they have to do is to become children again so that they can go back to Neverland," McCaughrean said.

"And when they get there, they find Neverland seriously changed. It's colder, and more dangerous and more frightening than it was before," she told BBC radio.

"Peter Pan is the same, anarchic little demon as he always was. Tinkerbell is not there at the beginning of the book but there's a new fairy, called Fireflyer, who is all bent on meeting her," she said.

Captain Hook's spirit is stalking Neverland and newcomers include mysterious circus master "The Great Ravello," and a male fairy Fireflyer.

"This is the biggest dilemma that faced me because he disappeared into a crocodile and I don't do ghosts. But his ship is still floating on the lagoon and his spirit of evil is still lurking," she said.

The plot and new characters were secret, with a pre-publication embargo placed on the book. However, in August, an investigation was launched into how a copy of the book came to be leaked to a US newspaper.

A party is scheduled to take place Thursday evening at Kensington Palace to celebrate the launch of the sequel in 34 languages. Author James Matthew Barrie lived near Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, where a Peter Pan statue stands.

McCaughrean was handpicked to write the sequel from nearly 200 authors around the world after London's Great Ormond Street children's hospital launched a search for a writer in August 2004.

Entrants were asked to submit a sample chapter and synopsis.

Great Ormond Street's copyright on the original "Peter Pan", bequeathed to it by Barrie in 1929, runs out next year.

The royalties for the new book will be split between McCaughrean and the hospital.

David Barrie, Barrie's great-great-nephew, said: "JM Barrie could never have guessed that Peter Pan would still be making a vital difference to Great Ormond Street Hospital almost 70 years after his death.

"I'm sure he would be delighted to know that, thanks to Geraldine McCaughrean's sequel, the boy who wouldn't grow up will go on helping children back to health for many years to come."