It’s Two-Sided Tuesday time! I love Tuesdays and I actually had a bit of a problem narrowing my choice down this week.. but overall I think I’m very pleased with the choice I made.
A book that I’ve seen a lot of splash on lately is The Magician’s by Lev Grossman. You can find my review of this book here. This is not your typical young adult Harry Potter-style story. It’s dark, it moves a little slow at times, but overall it’s an interesting story. However, after I read it and had some time to think about it I don’t recall it with as much fondness as I know I had hoped to. It’s still worth the read, but if you read this book and enjoyed it I’d like to introduce you to another novel I enjoyed 10 times more.
Have you heard of Brom? He’s a fairly dark character in and of himself. His biography cracks me up every time I read it .. and the unique thing about this author is that not only can he write, and write well, but his artwork is fantastic and adds so much to his stories.
This is the retelling of Peter Pan. It’s darker then the Disney story you have more than likely seen on TV or in the movies, and when you think about it – this makes sense. After all, J.M. Barrie wrote about children having life and death battles with grown men, pirates. This is not a happy-go-lucky fairy tale!
Brom, in his own words, summarizes the book best. In an interview posted at The Art Department Brom talks about why he chose to tell the story of Peter Pan in this way as follows:
Simply reading the original story (not the water-downed Disney version). I was amazed what a dark and disturbing tale it really is. Here’s a quote from the original Peter Pan: “The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two.”
Thins them out? Huh? What does that mean? Does Peter kill them, like culling a herd? Does he send them away somewhere? If so, where? Or does Peter just put them in such peril that the crop is in need of constant replenishing?
That one paragraph forever changed my perception of Peter Pan from that of a high-spirited rascal to something far more sinister. “Thins them out,” the words kept repeating in my head. How many children had Peter stolen, how many had died, how many had been thinned out? Peter himself said, “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” Once I pondered these unsettling elements I began to wonder what this children’s book would be like if the veil of Barrie’s lyrical prose were peeled back, if the violence and savagery were presented in grim stark reality. How would children really react to being kidnapped and thrust into such a situation? How hard would it be for them to fall under the spell of a charismatic sociopath, to shuck off the morality of civilization and become cold-blooded killers? And these thoughts were the seeds for The Child Thief.
This is a fantastic novel and I sing its praises everytime someone asks me about reading a fairy-tale like story. I knew while reading it that this would be a book I’d own and would sit proudly in clear view. I mean, in closing here, let me show you some of the beautiful artwork inside.
If you’d like to participate in Two-Sided Tuesday, add your name to the Mr. Linky! I’d love to see what you all are recommending!
