No character in all of literature better personifies mankind’s fascination with eternal youth than Peter Pan, the character invented by J.M. Barrie and introduced in his popular 1904 stage play Peter Pan, or The Boy Wouldn’t Grow Up and later in the 1911 novel version entitled Peter and Wendy.  George Bernard Shaw described the play as "ostensibly a holiday entertainment for children but really a play for grown-up people." The character was modeled on his older brother David, who died in a skating accident at age 13, and who was remembered by Barrie and his mother as forever a boy. The name Peter is borrowed from one of the sons of his friend Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and combined with Pan, the mischievous Greek god of the woodlands. His personality displays the stereotypical traits of the adolescent boy: he is self-centered, boastful, careless, fearless, nonchalant and forgetful.  He is a born leader and highly skilled: he can fly, he can fight; he can do just about anything that needs to be done. In the back story, Peter had flown away from his parents when he was a baby. Returning home, he finds the house closed and spies a new baby and concludes he is not wanted, so he never goes back. The action begins when Peter is caught listening to bedtime stories at the window of the home of Wendy Darling and loses his shadow while trying to escape.  Wendy re-attaches the shadow when he returns to claim it and he invites her to Neverland to be a mother to his tribe of Lost Boys. There they experience countless adventures that introduce us to characters that have universally well known: Tinkerbell the fairy, Tiger Lily the princess, the dastardly Captain Hook, Hook’s nemesis The Crocodile, and various fairies and mermaids.  The work has spawned numerous adaptations and derivative works, most notably the 1953 Disney film and a 2003 live action film.