The NYT’s Dinitia Smith looks at the hoopla surrounding Geraldine McCaughrean‘s sanctioned sequel to J.M. Barrie‘s classic about the boy who never wanted to grow up – and the lengths publishers will go to embargo the book. The Oxford University Press, which is bringing out the book in Britain, is scheduled to release it with a gala party at Kensington Palace. The publishers have even gone so far as to impose a prepublication embargo on the book. Booksellers and editors receiving galleys have had to sign confidentiality agreements. Emma Dryden, the editor, who is associate publisher of Simon & Schuster‘s Margaret K. McElderry Books imprint, which is bringing out the book in the United States, said both publishers :wanted people to be literally blown away, to come completely fresh to a new story.”
Despite that, Smith got hold of a copy of PETER PAN IN SCARLET and comments that the book “more in keeping with the style of Barrie’s educated, British voice, and her Peter is truer to the original: as selfish and egomaniacal as ever.” So how did it come about? It was a way for McCaughrean to conform to the original book’s dark standards, trying “very, very hard to pick up Barrie’s style and mood.” But for one thing: “I wanted Wendy to be more spunky than she was in the last book. I wanted her to take a hand in the adventures, be a bit more of a feminist. I did not want the kind of female that hangs on Peter’s every word.”