Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Yes, there is darkness in Peter Pan - and in Alice, too, and in The Wizard of Oz - and certainly in Felix Salton's Bambi. These books, while written for young people, and which may be described as fantasy, have real plots and real characters who are not perfect. Peter Pan is selfish and stubborn as well as charming because children are not angels - they are little humans. Alice is highly critical of the adults in her dream world - adults who act very arbitrarily and often foolishly, as adults often do. Bambi is about the effects of human cruelty on animals; it deals with death and pain. One of the indications that these are good books, and not merely children's books, is that they can be read at different stages of life with new layers of understanding. You don't have to outgrow them, and they are better than many a book written for adults. The 'real' Pan and Alice and Bambi may not be suitable for the very youngest children, but please don't deprive your children culturally by never giving them anything but Disney's cutesy interpretations. For one thing, Barrie and Salton and Carroll were great writers who used words beautifully and had insightand feeling. Children deserve art as much as adults.