When Wendy Grew Up
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Author: J.M. Barrie
Chapter 17 passage: This text from J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” takes place after the Darling children have returned to their London home from Neverland. Peter is faced with a momentous choice. Students will read the passage and respond to questions on the theme and the passage details.
Topic(s): Adventure / Thriller, Science Fiction / Fantasy. Skill(s): Theme, Summary, Story Elements. Genre(s): Prose
In the final chapter of Peter Pan, all the Darling children have returned home from their adventures with Peter in Neverland. Mr. and Mrs. Darling have agreed to adopt all the Lost Boys. Peter, however, is still hoping to convince Wendy to return to Neverland with him.
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Mrs. Darling came to the window, for at present she was keeping a sharp eye on Wendy. She told Peter that she had adopted all the other boys, and would like to adopt him also.
“Would you send me to school?” he inquired craftily.
“Yes.”
“And then to an office?”
“I suppose so.”
“Soon I would be a man?”
“Very soon.”
“I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things,” he told her passionately. “I don’t want to be a man. O Wendy’s mother, if I was to wake up and feel there was a beard!”
“Peter,” said Wendy the comforter, “I should love you in a beard;” and Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her.
“Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man.”
“But where are you going to live?”
“With Tink in the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to put it high up among the tree tops where they sleep at nights.”
“How lovely,” cried Wendy so longingly that Mrs. Darling tightened her grip.
“I thought all the fairies were dead,” Mrs. Darling said.
“There are always a lot of young ones,” explained Wendy, who was now quite an authority, “because you see when a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies who are not sure what they are.”
“I shall have such fun,” said Peter, with eye on Wendy.
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