Hi there, tudo certinho por aí?
Hoje compartilho com vocês o primeiro capítulo da versão adaptada de um dos maiores clássicos da literatura infantil: Peter Pan, do escritor escocês J. M. Barrie.
Esta adaptação é uma ótima oportunidade para você praticar seu inglês enquanto mergulha em uma história que conquistou gerações de leitores ao redor do mundo. E tem mais: o e-book conta com 105 páginas e 4 horas de áudio gravado por um locutor americano real — sem uso de inteligência artificial.
Quer continuar a aventura e acompanhar a história completa? Você pode adquirir o e-book por apenas R$19,90 clicando aqui.
Bons estudos e boa leitura!
CHAPTER 01 – PETER BREAKS THROUGH.
All children, except one, grow up. They eventually learn this truth, and for Wendy, the realization came when she was two years old. She was playing in the garden one day, picked a flower and ran to show it to her mother.
She must have looked adorable because Mrs. Darling pressed a hand to her heart and said, “Oh, why can’t you stay like this forever?”
That was all that was said on the subject, but from that moment on, Wendy knew she wouldn’t be a child forever. Two is the beginning of the end.
The family lived at number 14. Mrs. Darling was the heart of the house, a lovely woman with a romantic spirit and a sweet, slightly teasing smile. Her mind was like those intricate puzzle boxes from the East. Just when you think you’ve solved it, there’s always another layer inside. Her smile held a kiss that Wendy could see clearly in the right-hand corner of her mouth, but she could never quite reach it.
Mr. Darling won her hand in a rather chaotic way. Many men who had known her since childhood realized at the exact same moment that they were in love with her. They all rushed to her house to propose, but Mr. Darling took a cab and got there first.
He won her, mostly. He got everything except that innermost box of her mind and that elusive kiss. He didn’t even know the box existed, and eventually he stopped trying for the kiss. Wendy imagined even Napoleon would have failed to get it, likely storming out of the room in frustration.
Mr. Darling liked to brag that Mrs. Darling not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those serious men who knew all about stocks and shares. Nobody really understands the stock market, but he certainly seemed to, using financial jargon that impressed everyone.
In the early days of their marriage, Mrs. Darling tried to keep the household’s accounts perfectly. At first, not a single penny was unaccounted for, but soon the numbers were replaced by sketches of babies without faces, her silent guesses at what their future children might look like.
Wendy arrived first, followed by John, then Michael. For a week or two after Wendy’s birth, it wasn’t certain they could keep her. She was another mouth to feed, after all. Mr. Darling was incredibly proud, but he was also very honorable and practical. He sat on the edge of the bed, holding his wife’s hand while calculating expenses. Mrs. Darling looked at him with pleading eyes, willing to risk everything. But that wasn’t his style. He insisted on using a pencil and paper, and if she interrupted with suggestions, he had to start the math all over again.
“Don’t interrupt”, he begged. “I have one pound seventeen here, and a bit more at the office. I can cut out my morning coffee, which saves ten shillings. That makes two pounds nine, plus your eighteen, minus the money you lent that man at the door. Quiet, child. There, I’ve lost count. The question is, can we survive a year on nine pounds nine and seven?”
“Of course we can, George”, she insisted.
However, she was biased because she wanted Wendy, whereas he was trying to be the responsible one.
“Remember the mumps”, he warned, looking serious. “I’ve budgeted one pound for mumps, though it will likely cost more. Measles, German measles. Don’t wave your finger at me. Whooping cough.”
The math came out differently every time he tried to add it up. Eventually, Wendy just barely made the cut, thanks to him reducing the budget for mumps and treating the two types of measles as a single expense. The same financial panic happened with John, and it was an even closer call for Michael. But they kept them all. Soon the three children could be seen walking in a row to Miss Folsom’s kindergarten, escorted by their nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved order, and Mr. Darling loved fitting in with the neighbors, so a nurse was essential. However, since they were poor, mostly because the children drank so much milk, their nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog named Nana. She had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings hired her.
Nana took her job very seriously. She spent her free time peering into strollers in the park, much to the annoyance of human nannies, whom she followed home to report their negligence. Nana turned out to be a treasure. She was thorough during bath time, and woke up the instant one of her charges cried in the night.
Her kennel was placed right in the nursery. She had a genius for distinguishing a minor cough from one that required a scarf around the throat. She believed in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf and scoffed at modern theories about germs.
It was a lesson in good behavior to see her walking the children to school. She walked calmly beside them when they were good and nudged them back into line if they strayed. On days when John played soccer, she never forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth just in case.
At Miss Folsom’s school, the human nurses sat on benches while Nana lay on the floor. That was the only difference. They pretended to ignore her, considering her socially inferior, but she despised their gossip.
Nana resented it when Mrs. Darling’s friends visited the nursery. Still, if visitors arrived, she quickly whipped off Michael’s bib, put him in a nice shirt, smoothed Wendy’s dress, and fixed John’s hair. No nursery was run more correctly, and Mr. Darling knew it.
Yet, he sometimes worried about what the neighbors said. He had his reputation in the city to consider, after all.
Nana worried Mr. Darling in other ways, too. He often felt that she didn’t admire him enough. Mrs. Darling would assure him that the dog respected him tremendously, and then she would secretly signal the children to be extra nice to their father. These moments usually turned into lovely family dances.
Liza, the only other servant, was sometimes allowed to join in. She looked tiny in her long skirt and maid’s cap, though she had sworn she was an adult when she was hired. Those evenings were filled with joy.
Mrs. Darling was the happiest of all, spinning so wildly that she became a blur, and if you had been quick enough, you might have finally caught that hidden kiss. It was a simple, happy family, right up until the arrival of Peter Pan.
Mrs. Darling first learned about Peter while she was tidying up her children’s minds. It is the custom of every good mother, once her children are asleep, to organize their thoughts for the next morning. She puts everything back in its proper place, sorting through the many things that have wandered off during the day. If you could stay awake, you would see your own mother doing this.
It is very much like organizing a drawer. She kneels down, lingering over some sweet discovery, wondering where you picked up such a thought, or hurriedly hiding away something unpleasant. When you wake up, the naughtiness and bad feelings have been folded up small and placed at the bottom, while your prettiest thoughts are spread out on top, ready for you to wear.
I don’t know if you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors draw maps of the body, but a child’s mind is chaotic and keeps spinning around. It has zigzag lines like a temperature chart, which are likely roads on the island of Neverland.
Neverland is always an island, filled with splashes of color, coral reefs, distant ships, mysterious inhabitants, caves where rivers run, and a small hut falling into decay. If that were all, the map would be easy to read, but mixed in with the magic or thoughts about the first day of school, religion, fathers, needlework, and chocolate pudding. It is all very confusing, especially since nothing on the map stands still.
Of course, everyone’s Neverland is different. John’s island had a lagoon with flamingos he could shoot at. Michael, who was very small, had a wigwam. Wendy lived in a house made of leaves sewn together. John had no friends there, while Wendy had a pet wolf that had been abandoned by its parents. Still, all the Neverlands have a family resemblance. We have all been to these magic shores in our playtime, and though we can still hear the sound of waves, we can no longer land there.
Of all imaginary islands, Neverland is the coziest. It isn’t large and spread out with boring distances between adventures. It is nicely packed. When you play there by day with chairs and tablecloths, it isn’t scary at all. But in the two minutes before you fall asleep, it becomes very real. That is why children have nightlights.
Occasionally, while traveling through her children’s minds, Mrs. Darling found things she couldn’t understand. The most confusing was the word, Peter. She didn’t know a Peter. Yet he appeared here and there in John and Michael’s thoughts, while Wendy’s mind was scribbled all over with his name. The name stood out boldly, and Mrs. Darling felt it had an oddly arrogant look to it.
“Yes, he is rather cocky”, Wendy admitted with regret when her mother questioned her.
“But who is he, my pet?”
“He is Peter Pan, you know, mother.”
At first, Mrs. Darling didn’t know. But after thinking back to her own childhood, she vaguely remembered a Peter Pan, who was said to live with the fairies. There were strange stories that when children died, he accompanied them part of the way so they wouldn’t be frightened. She had believed in him back then. But now that she was a married woman with common sense, she doubted such a person existed.
“Besides”, she told Wendy, “he would be grown up by now.”
“Oh no, he isn’t grown up”, Wendy assured her confidently. “And he is just my size.”
She didn’t know how she knew this. She just did.
Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he dismissed the idea entirely. He claimed it was just some nonsense Nana had put into their heads, exactly the sort of silly idea a dog would have. He told her to ignore it, and it would pass.
However, it didn’t pass, and soon the troublesome boy gave Mrs. Darling quite a shock. Children often have the strangest adventures without being bothered by them. They might mention casually a week later that they met a ghost in the woods.
In this same casual way, Wendy made a disturbing revelation one morning. Some leaves had been found on the nursery floor, leaves that certainly weren’t there when the children went to bed. Mrs. Darling was studying them, puzzled, when Wendy spoke up with a tolerant smile.
“I do believe it is Peter again.”
“What do you mean, Wendy?”
“It is so naughty of him not to wipe his feet”, Wendy sighed. She was a very tidy child.
She explained, quite matter-of-factly, that she believed Peter sometimes visited the nursery at night. He would sit at the foot of her bed and play his pipes for her. Unfortunately, she never actually woke up during these visits, so she didn’t know how she knew he was there. She just knew.
“That’s nonsense, precious”, Mrs. Darling said. “No one can get into the house without knocking.”
“I think he comes in through the window”, Wendy replied.
“My love, we are three floors up.”
“But weren’t there leaves found at the foot of the window, Mother?”
It was true. Leaves had been found right near the window. Mrs. Darling didn’t know what to think. Wendy treated the whole thing so naturally that it was hard to dismiss it as a simple dream.
“My child”, her mother cried, “why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I forgot”, Wendy said lightly, rushing off to eat her breakfast. Surely she must have been dreaming. But then there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling examined them carefully. They were skeleton leaves, and she was certain they didn’t come from any tree growing in England. She investigated thoroughly, crawling on the floor with a candle to look for footprints, checking the chimney with a poker, and tapping the walls for secret passages.
She even lowered a measuring tape from the window to the pavement. It was a sheer 30-foot drop with no pipes to climb.
Certainly, Wendy had been dreaming. But she hadn’t been dreaming as the very next night proved. This was the night the extraordinary adventures of these children truly began. On this particular night, all the children were tucked in bed.
It happened to be Nana’s night off. Mrs. Darling had bathed them and sung to them until, one by one, they let go of her hand and drifted into sleep. They looked so safe and cozy that she smiled at her earlier fears and sat down calmly by the fire to sew.
She was making a shirt for Michael for his upcoming birthday. The fire was warm, and the nursery was dimly lit by three nightlights. Soon, the sewing dropped to her lap, and her head nodded gracefully. She was asleep. Ideally, there should have been a fourth nightlight for her.
As she slept, she had a dream. She dreamed that Neverland had come too close and a strange boy had broken through from it. He didn’t scare her, as she felt she had seen him before in the faces of women who have no children.
In her dream, the barrier hiding Neverland tore open, and she saw Wendy, John, and Michael peeking through the gap. The dream might have been insignificant on its own, but at that exact moment, the nursery window blew open, and a boy dropped onto the floor. He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than a fist, which darted around the room like a living creature. It was likely this light that woke Mrs. Darling.
She started up with a cry and saw the boy. Somehow, she knew at once that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had been there, we would have seen that he looked very much like Mrs. Darling’s hidden kiss.
He was a lovely boy, dressed in skeleton leaves and tree sap, but the most captivating thing about him was that he still had all his baby teeth. When he saw she was a grown-up, he gnashed those little white teeth at her.
