On the Same Page | Peter and the Starcatchers | Dave Barry + Ridley Pearson

Peter and the Starcatchers: Peter and the Starcatchers #1 • Dave Barry + Ridley Pearson

Friends, I do love me some Peter Pan. I grew up loving the Disney version, sure, but my faaaavorite Peter Pan when I was growing up was the live-action version with Mary Martin. You know, the one they just remade with Allison Williams. Also, HOOK. I’m honestly not sure what about the Peter Pan story appealed to me. Maybe it was Neverland. Maybe it was the Indians or the pirates. I don’t think it was Peter himself, but I still loved the idea of the boy who never grows up. So when we decided to read PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS for our May (yes, we’re late posting this one) On the Same Page book, I was pretty excited. A middle grade origin story of Peter Pan written by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson? Uh, yes please.

Short of just writing a review of the audiobook, which is narrated by Jim Dale, I wanted to focus this one on the specific aspects of how we meet Peter, Captain Hook, Neverland, Tinker Bell, Peter’s ability to fly and not age–all of the things that have been left to the imagination before now. It was pretty fun to read.
When we first meet Peter in PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS, they are boarding a boat from London after being removed from the orphanage where they’ve been living. Peter is their de facto leader, mostly on account of being older than the other boys and having superior spitting skills. The other boys, who seem to be the Lost Boys as we know them, all look to Peter for food on their journey, safety, and saving from their captivity on Mollusk Island (more on this in a second).

In all of the tellings of Peter Pan that I’m familiar with, Peter simply IS. He’s been on Neverland for time immemorial, at least to him anyway. He has little to no recollection of how he came to be there or where he came from. Same goes for the Lost Boys. It was so very fun and nerd-fabulous to have some version that tells us who Peter really is. (For the record, he’s nothing really like the insolent, energetic Peter you might know. He made me cry. True story, guys.)

What is the story of Peter Pan in any telling without Neverland? Literally nothing. There is no story. The way that Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson created their own mythology for Neverland was one of the coolest aspects of PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS. In the story we all know, Neverland is a magical island that can only be arrived at by flying towards the second star on the right (because there’s obviously only two stars in the whole sky, so determining this is super easy) and straight on til morning. Like, what kind of directions are these.

But in this story, Neverland is actually a real island in the real world and it’s real name, at least until Peter arrives, is Mollusk Island. (There are Indians living there, but Peter’s relationship with them is NOT good and I saw no evidence of Tiger Lily.) Peter renames it after something near the end of the story, and I loved it. There’s also some mystical magical doings that I imagine will make Mollusk Island/Neverland as difficult to reach as it is in the original stories. This part was really super cool.

The relationship I know between Captain Hook and Peter Pan has the vibe of a long-brewing antagonism stemming from Peter cutting off Captain Hook’s hand and feeding it to the crocodile. In PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS, the relationship between Peter and the pirate who will become Hook, Black Stache, is never good. Black Stache is a terrible person who wants to capture the “starstuff” for himself. But Peter here is a different boy than the one I grew up knowing, even though the outcome of his interactions with Stache are the same. And technically, there’s no hook yet. But it’s him.

I loved the backstory for this. So, some background for the background: There’s a character–well, a few characters–in PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS who are part of a group of people called the, umm, Starcatchers. They are responsible for making sure that “starstuff”–basically this incredibly powerful and dangerous stardust that falls to Earth every now and then–doesn’t wind up in the hands of bad guys. It’s the “starstuff” that serves a similar purpose in this story to the pixie dust we are all familiar with from the original stories that helps people fly. It also serves as the focal point of the main conflict in this book–Molly Astor, the Wendy who isn’t actually Wendy, and her father are both Starcatchers, and they are trying to keep the largest deposit of “starstuff” every to fall to Earth out of the wrong hands.

So we all know that one of Peter’s trademarks is his ability to fly. He’s also famously known as the boy who won’t grow up. In the movie versions that I grew up with, it always seemed like a given that Peter had these abilities because of Neverland and it’s magic. At least it did to my child’s mind. As with so many things in PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS, though, we see the origin of these magical gifts, and I LOOOOOOVED the conflict it presented to Peter. This is the part where he made me cry, friends.

The origin of Tink in PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS is really pretty lovely and cool. There’s some magic involved on the part of more than one character. This part gave me warm fuzzies, although I’m very interested to see how this origin story affects Peter and Tink’s canonical relationship, which obviously featured some jealousy on Tink’s part and some utter cluelessness on Peter’s.

Friends, I enjoyed this book so much. It started out a little slow for me, but it never really lost my interest, and then as things began to fall into place as the story progressed, I was often like “AWWW I LOVE HOW THIS WORKS OUT!” I can’t wait to keep reading to see what happens with Peter and Molly and the Starcatchers!

Don’t forget to check out Brittany and Alyssa‘s posts, too!