Today would have been the hundredth birthday of Mary Blair, one of
Disney’s most celebrated artists. Her many contributions to the company
include helping to design the figures for the ride it’s a small world and the characters for the films Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
In recent years, Disney has released lavish picture book editions of
each of those three stories written by prominent children’s book authors
and illustrated with concept art by Blair. In light of this milestone, I
picked up Peter Pan, hoping to get lost in the magic.
It’s
a rather curious thing that while I’ve always been drawn to the
character of Peter Pan, strongly resonating with his reluctance to grow
up, the Disney version of J. M. Barrie’s tale ranks pretty low in my
hierarchy of the company’s animated classics. Aside from the
exhilarating You Can Fly sequence, I tend to prefer the
made-for-TV Mary Martin version, though part of my problem may be that I
haven’t seen the Disney movie in years. Reading this book, I realized
there are whole segments of which I have no memory, including the entire
interlude with the seductive mermaids. I really ought to watch it again
soon. In the meantime, I found myself transported by the enchantment of
Blair’s paintings and the wry storyteller quality of the writing by
Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, who have co-written several intermediate
novels about Peter and his friends.
This is a handsome
full-sized picture book just over 50 pages in length. It contains 29 of
Blair’s paintings, most of which take up one full page and spill over
onto the opposite page about a fifth of the way. The text never is
printed over top of the painting. Instead, it rests against a white
background sometimes augmented by a simple stylized silhouette of a
shape such as a skull or the rigging of a pirate ship. These designs are
next to or below the words but never directly behind them, giving the
book a very clean and easy-to-read appearance.
The print is
fairly large, and on most pages, several words are printed in a bigger
font and a different color. For instance, on one page, the word “nasty” –
referring to a plan concocted by the nefarious Captain Hook – is
printed in red; on another, “Indian Chief” is in blue. Additionally, the
words are laid out in such a way that it resembles free verse poetry,
though the narrative style is not as poetic as Cynthia Rylant’s in the
comparable Cinderella storybook.
While I’ve never read
the Barry-Pearson books – an oversight I’ve been meaning to correct – I
am familiar with Barry from his humor columns. At his best, he’s left me
in stitches, so I was curious to hear his narrative voice here. Of
course, as this is a collaborative effort, I’m not entirely sure who
wrote what, but in any case, the humor is present but nowhere near the
level of outright wackiness that marks much of Barry’s writing. The
subtle wit works well, not pulling us out of the story but every once in
a while winking at the audience before moving on to the next phase of
the adventure. My two favorite instances of this are as follows.
“The
leader of the pirates was a particularly nasty man known as Captain
Hook. He was called that because he had a hook in place of one of his
hands. His first mate was a man known as Smee. He was called that
because he looked like a Smee.”
“Unfortunately, Tink was a
jealous sort of fairy. She did not care for Wendy. So she flew ahead and
told the Lost Boys to shoot Wendy down with their slingshots. Being
boys, they thought this was a fine idea.”
Never Land is a
dangerous place, especially for Peter’s special guest Wendy, since those
who wish him harm capture her to lure Peter in and those who want Peter
all to themselves keep attempting to inflict bodily injury on her to
get her out of the way. There’s virtually no dialogue in the book; Peter
only speaks a couple of times, and he doesn’t say much, and frankly,
that makes him easier to take here. As much fun as he is, Peter is a
rather arrogant young man, and all his boasting can get a bit tiresome.
The narrative style doesn’t allow us to get too close to the characters
(many of whom are omitted or not specifically named), so when it ends,
I’m not left with the sense of malaise I usually get when Wendy returns
to London to resume the mundane course of ordinary life and Peter flies
off to his eternal childhood, soon to forget her almost entirely. “This
story has happened before, and it will happen again,” our narrators tell
us, and somehow, that seems okay.
While I enjoy the writing
very much, the illustrations seem to have been the main purpose for this
book, and they are wonderful. Culled from the Disney archives and the
private collection of Howard Lowery, they are richly imaginative, with
the emphasis on this remarkable world rather than the characters that
populate it. Most of the paintings keep Peter, Wendy and others at arm’s
length; rarely are we allowed a glimpse of any significant facial
features, so their emotions remain largely hidden. Instead, we see them
against magnificent backdrops saturated with color. Our first glimpse of
Never Land allows us to see the entire island. It seems to exist in a
space outside of time; stars swirl around the verdant expanse as the
purplish mist rises off the mountains and the pirate ship makes for the
shore through waters reflecting the pink of a blossoming sunrise.
While
some paintings seem to incorporate practically every hue in the
palette, others are almost monochromatic. The two-page spread in the
middle of the book in which the boys march along the beach toward the
Indian settlement atop a high plateau is sepia but for the pale yellow
sun and the red of the cliffside rock. Several of the paintings depict
nighttime scenes and are so dark that it’s a struggle to pick out
details. That’s not really the case, though, in my favorite nighttime
painting, a depiction of the Lost Boys’ multi-level underground lair,
which is lit by several candles. It’s a fairly simple structure, but it
looks absolutely glorious.
The pictures that do give us
close-ups of the characters are revealing. John leads with gusto,
shaking his umbrella as he shouts a command to the other boys, whose
reaction is ambiguous because they are so shrouded in shadow. Peter
looks cocky as can be as he stands amongst the adoring mermaids but
softly perplexed as he holds a dying Tink in his hands after she tries
to save him from Hook’s latest evil plot. Hook, too, has his moment,
with just a wide grin and his huge hooked nose visible under his plumed
red hat as he contemplates Peter’s demise.
It’s fascinating to
peruse these paintings and ponder the progression from these to what we
saw in the movie. Blair’s artistry is immediately apparent; it’s little
wonder that this woman is so highly regarded. If you want to familiarize
yourself with her distinctive style and get a sense for how Disney
characters and settings are crafted, this beautiful edition of Peter Pan will set you on the right course.
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