编辑推荐
适读人群 :8岁及以上 Grade 3-5-- A portion of the royalties from this book are being donated to a British charity, but that's not a strong enough reason to buy it. Four movable pictures (the sort that rotate to dissolve from one scene to another), plus a scattering of tiny, hard-to-find flaps, accompany an incoherently abridged text. The slightly antique-looking art is crudely executed; small figures with distorted or indistinct features change relative sizes from spread to spread, and are placed, in most scenes, with no discernible logic. Stick with the original, available in several handsome editions, or if you must have an abridgment, go for the book/cassette package illustrated by Diane Goode, read by Lynn Redgrave, and adapted by Josette Frank (Random, 1987).
Peter, Wendy, Captain Hook, the lost boys, and Tinker Bell have filled the hearts of children ever since Barrie's play first opened in London in 1904 and became an immediate sensation. Now this funny, haunting modern myth is presented with Bedford's wonderful illustrations, which first appeared in the author's own day, have long been out of print, and have never been equaled.
内容简介
The story of Peter Pan, the "boy who would never grow up", and his adventures in Neverland, provides insights into feelings about parents, boys and girls, and responsibility.
作者简介
Sir James Mathew Barrie was born on May 9, 1860, at Kirriemuir in Scotland, the ninth of ten children of a weaver. When Barrie was six, his older brother David died in a skating accident. Barrie then became his mother's chief comforter, while David remained in her memory a boy of thirteen who would never grow up. Barrie received his M.A. degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1882 and began working as a journalist. In 1885 he moved to London, and his writings were collected in Auld Licht Idlls (1888) and A Window in Thurns (1889), which, together with a sentimental novel, The Little Minister (1891), made him a best-selling author. In 1894 he married an actress, Mary Ansell, but the marriage was profoundly unhappy, produced no children, and was dissolved in 1910. However, a favorite Saint Bernard dog of Mary's later became the famous Nana of Peter Pan. In 1897, with the adaptation of The Little Minister, Barrie became a successful playwright, writing the plays The Admirable Crichton (1902), What Every Woman Knows (1903), and Peter Pan (1904), which was produced in 1904 and revived in London every Christmas season thereafter. While the figure of Peter Pan first appeared in Barrie's book The Little White Bird (1902), the story and the concept began in the tales Barrie told the sons of Mrs. Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, a woman Barrie loved. Barrie then published the story of Peter Pan in book form as Peter and Wendy (1911). The best of Barrie's later works is Dear Brutus (1917), a haunting play that again brought the supernatural and fantasy to the London stage. Barrie died in 1937, bequeathing the copyright of Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, a hospital for children.
内页插图
精彩书摘
Chapter One
Peter Breaks Through
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.
Of course they lived at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the righthand corner.
The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.
Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.
Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces. She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were Mrs. Darling's guesses.
Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.
For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece of paper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at the beginning again.
"Now don't interrupt," he would beg of her. "I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office; I can cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making two nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven, with five naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven-who is that moving?-eight nine seven, dot and carry seven-don't speak, my own-and the pound you lent to that man who came to the door-quiet, child-dot and carry child-there, you've done it!-did I say nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on nine nine seven?"
"Of course we can, George," she cried. But she was prejudiced in Wendy's favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.
"Remember mumps," he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went again. "Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay it will be more like thirty shillings-don't speak-measles one five, German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six-don't waggle your finger-whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings"-and so on it went, and it added up differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through, with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds of measles treated as one.
There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon you might have seen the three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergarten school, accompanied by their nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough she was at bath-time; and up at any moment of the night if one of her charges made the slightest cry. Of course, her kennel was in the nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking around your throat. She believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children to school, walking sedately by their side when they were well behaved, and butting them back into line if they strayed. On John's soccer days she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. There is a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's school where the nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that was the only difference. They affected to ignore her as of an inferior social status to themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs. Darling's friends, but if they did come she first whipped off Michael's pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding, and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.
No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and Mr. Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the neighbours talked.
He had his position in the city to consider.
Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling that she did not admire him. "I know she admires you tremendously, George," Mrs. Darling would assure him, and then she would sign to the children to be specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in which the only other servant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join. Such a midget she looked in her long skirt and maid's cap, though she had sworn, when engaged, that she would never see ten again. The gaiety of these romps! And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette so wildly that all you could see of her was the kiss, and then if you had dashed at her you might have got it. There never was a simpler happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island; for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all; but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needlework, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on; and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.
Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents; but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood in a row you could say of them that they have each other's nose, and so forth. On these magic shores c...
《星际迷航:起源》 地球历2345年:人类探索的黎明 在经历了漫长的技术飞跃与社会变革后,人类终于将目光投向了广袤无垠的宇宙。这本厚重的编年史,以详实的笔触记录了人类文明迈出摇篮,迈向星辰大海的第一个关键纪元——“起源时代”。 本书并非聚焦于某一个英雄人物的个人传奇,而是以宏大的叙事结构,勾勒出二十四世纪中叶至二十五世纪初,联邦(United Federation of Planets)从初步接触到最终成型的复杂历程。我们看到的,不再是科幻小说中那种一蹴而就的完美乌托邦,而是一群充满矛盾、激情、恐惧与希望的探索者们,在冰冷的真空和未知的生命面前,如何艰难地建立起自己的道德准则与航行规范。 第一部分:地球的再定义与初次接触 在“起源时代”初期,地球正处于后资源短缺的过渡阶段。通过零点能的初步开发和基因工程的普及,人类社会结构经历了剧烈的重塑。本书详尽分析了这一时期社会学、政治学和哲学领域发生的深刻变化。我们跟随历史学家深入解读了“大分裂时期”结束后,各国政府如何逐渐解体,并被一个松散的、以科学和人道主义为核心的全球理事会所取代。 随后,故事的焦点转向了对火星、木星卫星以及比邻星系的殖民尝试。作者并未回避早期的失败和牺牲,详细描述了“赫尔墨斯计划”的灾难性后果——一次因计算错误导致的星舰解体,以及由此引发的关于星际探索风险与回报的全球性辩论。 真正的转折点发生在公元2287年,人类首次接收到来自仙女座星系边缘的、清晰的非自然信号。本书花了大量篇幅还原了“罗塞塔事件”的紧张过程:从信号的截获、解析到最终决定派出第一艘配备曲速引擎的原型舰“先驱者号”进行回应。书中引用了大量解密档案和船员日志,展现了科学家与军事人员在面对“真正外星文明”时的心理冲击与决策挣扎。 第二部分:瓦肯星的智慧与联邦的雏形 “先驱者号”的旅程揭示了一个重要的现实:人类的傲慢与无知。他们发现,宇宙中并非只有蛮荒的星球,而是存在着古老、逻辑严密且技术远超人类的文明——瓦肯人(Vulcans)。 本书详细描绘了瓦肯外交官与地球代表团之间错综复杂的早期接触。瓦肯人的冷静、对逻辑的极端推崇,与人类的情感驱动、易变的情绪形成了鲜明的对比。这一阶段的重点在于“文化冲突与融合”。我们看到,正是瓦肯人教会了人类如何进行星际伦理操作,如何控制曲速引擎的副作用,以及最重要的是,如何理解“多元化中的统一性”。 作者深入剖析了“逻辑教派”与“情感复苏运动”在瓦肯社会内部的争斗,以及这些内部张力如何影响到与人类的互动。人类代表团在学习瓦肯逻辑的同时,也无意中将“人性的不确定性”植入了联邦的早期设计中,这成为了联邦最终区别于其他任何星际帝国的核心特质。本书认为,正是这种“不完美性”的结合,孕育出了星际联邦的最终形态。 第三部分:黑暗的阴影与同盟的建立 起源时代并非一片坦途。随着人类和瓦肯人在银河系边缘的活动范围扩大,他们不可避免地遭遇了更具敌意的势力。本书的第三部分聚焦于与克林贡帝国(Klingon Empire)的最初几次武装冲突,以及与安多利亚人(Andorians)建立的初步军事同盟。 克林贡人以其崇尚荣誉、战斗至上的文化,构成了人类和瓦肯人集体认知中的第一个“终极他者”。作者细致地分析了早期边境冲突的起因——通常是由于对领土、资源或星际航道规则的误解。书中不再使用简单的“好人”与“坏蛋”的二元对立,而是展示了克林贡内部的政治派系斗争,以及他们对“荣誉”这一概念的复杂解读,如何让他们将和平视为暂时的、不可信赖的状态。 同时,本书也记录了对安多利亚人——一个冰冷星球上的蓝色种族——的深入了解过程。他们对联邦的加入是出于对共同敌人(如早期的掠夺者)的防御需要,而不是基于乌托邦式的理想。这一时期的外交记录充满了猜疑、秘密协定和高风险的间谍活动,为后世联邦的军事安全政策奠定了基础。 第四部分:星际联邦的正式成立 在经历了数次共同对抗外部威胁和内部政治妥协之后,公元2371年(历史学家对该日期的定义略有争议,但通常以此为标志),星际联邦正式在地球的旧金山成立。 本书以极大的篇幅描述了《联邦宪章》的起草过程。这个过程充满了激烈的辩论:自由意志与社会责任的界限、科技进步的监管、对外星文明不干涉的原则(即“初级指令”)的制定等。作者展示了早期的起草者们,如何在“绝对自由”的理想主义与“绝对安全”的军事现实之间,艰难地寻找平衡点。 最终,宪章的诞生象征着数个物种对共同目标的认可:和平探索、科学研究、以及相互尊重。 结语:遗留的遗产 《星际迷航:起源》的结尾并非庆祝一个完美结局,而是强调这是一个永恒的起点。它通过对那些早期宇航员、外交官和科学家们的详细记录,提醒读者,联邦的强大不在于其飞船的火力或引擎的速度,而在于它愿意不断地审视自己的道德缺陷,并向未知伸出援手的勇气。 这本书是为所有对宏大历史、复杂政治以及跨物种社会学感兴趣的读者准备的,它提供了一份对人类如何超越自身局限、建立银河系灯塔的详尽、不加粉饰的记录。它让我们看到,通往星辰的道路,是由无数个艰难的决定铺就而成的。