Peter Pan for World Nursery Rhyme Week

Nov 16

This week is #WorldNurseryRhymeWeek - otherwise known as #rhymeweek Hooray!

I love writing in rhyme and have lots of books that are written in verse. Young children love rhyming stories and find them easier to learn by heart.

In this post, I'm going to tell you about my version of Peter Pan, illustrated by Sarah Warburton and published by Nosy Crow.

Back in 2015, Nosy Crow asked me if I would be up for the challenge of retelling this timeless classic in rhyme. Of course I said, "YES!" even though I had no idea how I would go about such a thing!

I don't know if you've ever read JM Barrie's original story - most of us probably know this tale from the film adaptations rather than from having read the original book. I had never read it, so the first thing I did was to find a copy and dive in. Immediately it was obvious that the book was very much "of its time," and is a very different read to the book we wanted to create.

My editor courageously offered to create a plan, highlighting which bits of the novel to include and what to leave out.

For the next two months I was pretty much chained to my desk, writing and rewriting verses and trying to communicate this magical story in a way that was more in line with modern values without losing the essence of the original.

I can't tell you how many revisions there were during editing but it was a LOT! And once Sarah Warburton started creating artwork, there were MORE edits. In fact, this book went through more iterations - both of the text and the artwork, than any other project I've worked on.

In all, editing continued for over three years, which is a crazy long time for a picture book. We had many, many conversations on diversity, gender, politics, historical context and cultural representation. Writing can become a very political activity and this book was even affected by the Trump administration and talk of the Mexican border wall. You'd be amazed how politics can influence the creation of children's literature.

It was the biggest challenge of my writing career and hey, was it worth it! I'm hugely proud of this book, which is twice as long as a normal picture book and printed as a gorgeous hardback with embossed detail and dust cover.