'Peter Pan' sequel launched on centenary of creation

Copies of the book Peter Pan in Scarlet in a bookshop in central London

More than 500,000 copies of the work written by Geraldine McCaughrean have been published for the launch in English but also in languages including Basque, Chinese, French, Hebrew and Polish.

Some 200,000 copies are available in the United States and 50,000 in Britain.

"I'm more nervous now that I was when I signed on because I just didn't realise in my ignorance that it was going to be quite that big," said McCaughrean, a British children's author.

"I thought it was a very English kind of a book, possibly American, but not Korean and Russian. It's just very exciting," she told BBC radio.

In the new book, Wendy is now a wife and mother.

"They've grown up.... the first thing they have to do is to become children again so that they can go back to Neverland," McCaugh-rean said.

"And when they get there, they find Neverland seriously changed. It's colder, and more dangerous and more frightening than it was before," she said, "Peter Pan is the same, anarchic little demon as he always was. Tinkerbell is not there at the beginning of the book but there's a new fairy, called Fireflyer, who is hell bent on meeting her."

Captain Hook's spirit is stalking Neverland and newcomers include mysterious circus master "The Great Ravello," and a male fairy Fireflyer.

McCaughrean was handpicked to write the sequel from nearly 200 authors around the world after London's Great Ormond Street children's hospital launched a search for a writer in August 2004. Entrants were asked to submit a sample chapter and synopsis.