Barrie - Book Reviews

***** - Excellent
**** - Good
*** - Okay
** - Bad
* - Terrible
+ - Half-star

Peter Pan
James M. Barrie
Project Gutenberg - Public Domain Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+

DESCRIPTION: Wendy, John, and Michael Darling knew of Peter Pan long before they saw him. A wisp of dream, a half-forgotten cradle song about a boy who refused to grow up... but those were just stories. The boy who flew through the nursery window, leaving his shadow behind for Mrs. Darling to find, is real. Try as their parents and faithful nanny, the dog Nana, might, Peter won't stay away. Soon, he convinces the Darling children to fly away with him to Neverland, a world forged of adventure and imagination. Pirates and fairies and mermaids and more... every day in Neverland brings a new story to tell. But soon Wendy starts to wonder when - or even if - Peter will let them return home.

REVIEW: This was a free e-book download from Project Gutenberg, which claims to be "created in the United States of America from a comparison of various editions determined by age to be in the Public Domain in the United States." Whatever that means... In any event, I'm acting under the presumption that this is a faithful rendition of the original text. Considering the age, the overall story holds up decently, even if some glaring stereotypes (girls doing nothing but darning socks and wanting babies, "redskin" savages, etc.) and archaic language date it. Peter comes across as far less of a benevolent playmate than an oddly inhuman captor, an immature demigod who proves as much a danger as a protector for the Darlings and the Lost Boys. As sad as it seems to know that children must grow up, Peter himself seems even sadder, forever denied the love of a family by his own nature. His story isn't the only disturbing subtext beneath Neverland; Barrie recognizes the dark side of childhood and imagination at several points. The story moves fairly well, though the characters tend to the exaggerated and goofy, even the pirate crew of Captain Hook. I almost gave this a solid Good rating, if only because the other books I'm currently reading (save the Animorphs reread) have tended toward the dull and dismal. In the end, though, the goofiness and the annoying intrusions of the narrator kept it down.

You might also enjoy:
Demons Don't Dream (Piers Anthony, Fiction - A computer game leads two kids into the magical world of Xanth, where magic and puns abound)
Dream a Little Dream (Piers Anthony and Julie Brady, Fiction - A dark force threatens Kafka, the world created by human dreams)
The Everworld series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - Four Chicago teens find themselves in a world of magic and elder-day gods)
Peter and the Starcatchers (Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, YA Fiction - An orphan boy aboard a doomed ship becomes part of the struggle over "starstuff," a potent source of magic)
The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, YA Fiction - Young Dorothy and her dog Toto are swept up by a tornado and dropped in the magical land of Oz)
The Sea Fairies (L. Frank Baum, YA Fiction - Young Trot and Cap'n Bill visit the wonder-filled realm of the mermaids)
Faerie Wars (Herbie Brennan, YA Fiction - A boy finds a faerie prince in the garden and becomes part of a brewing interdimensional war)
The Sisters Grimm series (Michael Buckley, YA Fiction - Two sisters learn that fairy tales were based on real events)
The Best of Lewis Carroll (Lewis Carroll, YA Fiction - Includes the adventures of young Alice, as she falls down a rabbit hole to Wonderland and later passes through a mirror into Looking-Glass Land)
The Inkheart trilogy (Cornelia Funke, YA Fiction - A bookbinder and his daughter can read characters to life out of books... and read people into them)
Coraline (Neil Gaiman, YA Fiction - A girl finds a little doorway to another world that seems even better than her own... at first)
Librarian: Little Boy Lost (Eric Hobbs, YA Fiction - A bookish boy discovers secrets and dangers in a mysterious library)
The Book of Story Beginnings (Kristin Kladstrup, YA Fiction - Two kids find themselves living out the stories they started in a magical journal)
Un Lun Dun (China Miéville, YA Fiction - Two English girls discover strange wonders and dangers in the "abcity" mirror of London)
Anne of Green Gables (Lucy Maud Montgomery, YA Fiction - The aging, sedate Cuthberts adopt a precocious, lively orphan girl to help on their small farm)
The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica (James A. Owen, YA Fiction - Three Englishmen travel to the Archipelago of Dreams, inspiration for story and myth since the world began)
The Dragon Box (Katie W. Stewart, YA Fiction - A game pulls a boy into an imperiled magical land)
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams, Fiction - A man finds himself in the world of Faerie, where magic has grown in a twisted mockery of technology)
Peter Pan (Widescreen Edition) (2003 movie DVD, the most faithful, least-Disneyfied adaptation of Barrie's tale yet filmed)

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