Neverland AcademyMeet the Characters
The very smallest of the Darlings — five years old, in a nightgown, with a teddy bear held tight.
Featured on the map at The Home Under the Ground · The Never Woods
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When Peter Pan came for the Darling children, Michael was still small enough to sleep in a wooden nursery crib. He stood up in his cream nightgown, hugged his teddy bear tight, and simply stared up at the little golden light.
Wherever Michael went — over London rooftops, through the Never Woods, onto the deck of the Jolly Roger — his small brown teddy bear went with him, tucked fast under one arm. He would not have gone without it.
Michael was too little to be doubtful. He believed in Peter, in fairies, in mermaids and pirates and second stars. And, unlike his brother and sister, he grew up remembering every bit of it exactly.
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A short bedtime version — one screen. Read it aloud together.
Every night, in a warm English nursery in London, three children slept with the window open. This story is not about Peter Pan. And it is not about Wendy. It is about the very smallest of the three — a little boy who was almost too small for adventures at all. His name was Michael Darling.
Michael was five years old. He had a tumble of golden curls, and enormous blue-grey eyes, and a small brown teddy bear that he took absolutely everywhere. On the night this story begins, Michael was still sleeping in a wooden crib. Because he was, still, that little.
And that is why, when Peter Pan came in through the nursery window on a wind of pixie dust, it was Michael who was most astonished of all. He stood up in his crib in his cream nightgown, hugged his teddy bear tight, and looked up — quite silently — at the golden light dancing above his head.
Peter taught him to fly. And out he went into the London sky, small nightgown fluttering, teddy bear clutched fast under one arm, his sister Wendy holding out her hand to steady him. And they followed the second star to the right, and straight on till morning.
In Neverland, Michael was too small to fight pirates. So he did other things. He met the tribe of the Never Woods, and one of the warriors, tall and kind, knelt right down to say hello. In the Home Under the Ground, Wendy tucked him into a bed of hollow roots, pulled the quilt to his chin, and read him a story by lantern light.
And when the pirates did come, and the children were taken aboard the Jolly Roger — Michael did not cry. He was small, but he was brave. He stood on that black-flagged deck and hugged his teddy bear tight, tight, tight. Then Peter came, as Peter always does. And in the end Michael went home, and curled up in his own bed at dawn, with his teddy bear tucked under his cheek, as a single last spark of pixie dust drifted quietly out the nursery window.
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