Following the highly successful debut of the play about Peter Pan in 1904, Barrie's publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, extracted chapters 13–18 of The Little White Bird and published them in 1906 under the title Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham.[16] The text of this version is almost identical to those chapters, with minor changes to the text to read better without the surrounding story.[17] It was presented as a book for children, many of whom had experienced Peter Pan's exploits in the successful stage play.
Although sometimes described as a prelude or (less correctly) prequel to the better-known story told in the play and novel, there are inconsistencies which make the two stories incompatible with each other. Most significant is the character of Peter Pan himself, who is said to be only seven days old, and there isn't "the slightest chance of his ever having [a birthday]"; in the later story his age is never specified, except that he has his baby teeth and is portrayed as school age.
