It was known afterwards on the island as the Sparrow’s Year; and so, when you meet grown-up people in the Gardens who puff and blow as if they thought themselves bigger than they are, very likely they belong to that year.
The author creates extraordinary explanations for ordinary phenomena, as well as using an everyday logic for the worldbuilding of the fantastical world of the gardens.
unfortunately, a Mrs. Finch had come to the meeting uninvited, and she squeaked out, ‘We don’t build nests to hold water, but to hold eggs,’ and then the thrushes stopped cheering, and Solomon was so perplexed that he took several sips of water. ‘Consider,’ he said at last, ‘how warm the mud makes the nest.’
This entire scene (continuing into the next page) reminds me of the group conversation scene in Alice where all the animals have finished escaping from the flood and are arguing about how to get dry. The humor uses similar techniques and they both involve a sardonic way of looking at the ridiculous parts of ordinary life.
for years he had been quietly filling his stocking. It was a stocking belonging to some bathing person which had been cast upon the island, and at the time I speak of it contained a hundred and eighty crumbs, thirty-four nuts, sixteen crusts, a pen-wiper, and a boot-lace.
mixing of mundane and extraordinary to create a humorous, absurd aesthetic
But he did not play with his precious bank-note, for he knew what it was at once, having been very observant during the week when he was an ordinary boy. With so much money, he reflected, he could surely at last contrive to reach the Gardens
Peter Pan is an intermediary between the worlds, so he creates further transitions, ruptures, and other interactions between them.
‘Poor little half-and-half!’ said Solomon,
Peter Pan is caught halfway between worlds. He could be said to be stuck within the portal rather than on one side or another. This reminds me of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and other guide figures in portal fiction, but I can't think of other examples where the guide figure is also (more or less) the main character.
Another was lolling on a garden chair, reading a postage-stamp which some human had let fall
Mundane/discarded objects are given a behind-the-scenes life.
Lock-out Time
The concept of Lock-out Time used here seems to be part of a trend explored later in the novel, where the fantastic is glimpsed just out of the corner of the eye, figuratively and literally. Later on, the fairies can be spotted by literally glancing sideways at the right moment, and here, the portal is a way of exploring the mystery of what happens to a place when you are not looking.
Of course, it also shows that Peter is ever so old, but he is really always the same age, so that does not matter in the least.
The protagonist is eternally a child, which reflects the shortsighted perception of children where they can't imagine life beyond the boundaries of their stage of life. It also plays into the nostalgia that underlies the text, where despite how life continues as always outside the gardens, Peter Pan is always young -- and our memories of childhood are always preserved in a seemingly timeless mental space when we return to them.
It is a lovely lake, and there is a drowned forest at the bottom of it. If you peer over the edge you can see the trees all growing upside down, and they say that at night there are also drowned stars in it
Lovely imagery, and continues the technique of taking a mundane phenomenon and coming up with an outlandish but direct logic for it, evoking the logic of childhood.
the paths make themselves because it is their only chance of getting to the Round Pond
personified landscape
But, like all the most wonderful things that happen in the Gardens, it is done, we concluded, at night after the gates are closed.
Temporally based portal, but also physically based, with the closing of the gates as a way of delineating the "real" from the unreal, although both categories bleed into each other.
over which your nurse has such authority that if she holds up her finger to any one of them it stops immediately
This is the first place where the familiar becomes unfamiliar/absurd by viewing it through an absurd/unfamiliar lens, in this case, the worldview of a small child. This sets up a pattern throughout the whole work.