Geraldine McCaughrean that what makes her love writing is the desire to escape from an unsatisfactory world. Her motto is: do not write about what you know, write about what you want to know. Her work includes many retellings of classic stories for children: "The Odyssey", "El Cid", "The Canterbury Tales", "The Pilgrim's Progress", "Moby Dick", "One Thousand and One Arabian Nights" and "Gilgamesh". J. M. Barrie gave all rights to "Peter Pan" to Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1929, and in 2004, to coincide with "Peter Pan"'s centenary, the hospital launched a competition to find the author of a sequel. McCaughrean
Peter Pan in Scarlet and US. Five copies of a special edition, leather bound in a slipcase, were also printed; the author, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Oxford University Press, and HM The Queen (Patron of Great Ormond Street Hospital) each received one of these special edition books. The fifth was auctioned at the book launch. A new edition, fully illustrated in colour by David Wyatt, abridged by Geraldine McCaughrean for younger readers, was published in the UK in October 2008 by Oxford University Press. The novel returns to Wendy Darling, her brother John, and Nibs, Slightly, Tootles, the Twins and Curly, who were once