About this title: "How did Peter Pan meet Captain Hook?" A child's question inspired this original prequel to J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" works, written by crime thriller author Ridley Pearson and newspaper column humorist Dave Barry. This pirate saga involves the sailing ship Never Land, which carries a chest of "starstuff," magic powder that can heal injuries, stop the aging process, and enable people to fly. Peter, four other orphans, and Molly, a British ambassador's daughter, are also aboard the ship. Some remarkable new characters are introduced, among them sailors Slank and Smee; Fighting Prawn, an ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Disney Editions
Date Published: 08/2004
ISBN-13:9780786854455ISBN:0786854456
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 451 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Disney Editions
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780786839247ISBN:0786839244
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. light cover wear. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 464 p. Starcatchers (Paperback), 1. Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Disney Editions
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780786839247ISBN:0786839244
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. clean, straight, tight and unmarked 1st printing, very little wear. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 464 p. Starcatchers (Paperback), 1. Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
Description: Good. Dust Cover Missing. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
"Peter and the Starcatchers is about how Peter Pan became Peter Pan. It's a more detailed account of how Peter got to Neverland, befriended Tinkerbell, become an enemy of Captain Hook, how Captain Hook got his name, and how Peter learned to fly and stay young forever. Peter grew up in a dingy orphanage in London and was forced to board a ship called 'The Neverland' that would take them to a strange land where they would be forced to work as slaves. Instead, they get attacked by Black Stash (Captain Hook before he became Captain Hook) and his crew then gets shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific Ocean. But while Peter was aboard the ship, he met a girl named Molly who told him about a mysterious dust called Starstuff. Starstuff can make anything happen. But it can also destroy things if it is exposed to too much of it. Starstuff turns out to be the secret behind Peters flying abilities and immortality.
While reading Peter and the Starcatchers, I made a text-to-self connection identifying with Peter and all his hardships mixed with adventures. The book just really struck a chord in me. It reminded me of when I was home-schooling and feeling outside of everything in my own separate world. Peter cannot get out of his separate world and reality on the island now that he has been overexposed to the Starstuff. I was stuck outside of school on my own kind of island for a while. I like Peter's spirit and the way he relates to Captain Hook and other adversities. He has a good personality and fun, playful way of relating to all the bad stuff. He served as a good role model to me
I give this book 5 stars. It is my all time favorite book. I loved the humor, the constant action, the clear narrative, the really clever writing style in the short chapters, and exciting, and complicated turn of events. The characters all had a little more color and flair in a more modern way that the original version of the story. The Starstuff was more interesting in this plot. The characters had deeper relationships and were more developed. I would recommend this book to readers that like adventure stories like the Percy Jackson series, or who are just curious about a more elaborate and witty version of Peter Pan."
"Just finished reading "Peter and the Starcatchers" by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, and have to wonder why they bothered. To me -and I don't think I'm too far off on this - the real appeal of James Barrie's story of Peter Pan lies in that it is a fairy tale that we are invited to accept without exposition. So for Barry and Pearson to come in with this exposition - explaining away the magic of Never-Never Land with starstuff, an idealistic organization guarding it and a sinister organization covering it - robs the story of it's otherworld appeal.
Never-Never Land, as we know, is "second star to the right and straight on till morning." Pearson and Barry want Never-Never Land to be on some Caribbean island, where Peter Pan is created by accident and ignorance as he monkeys with a box of starstuff, from whence he gains the ability to fly and the inability to grow up. I don't want Never-Never Land to be bound by Earth, and, for me, it doesn't have to be. Wendy, Peter and John suspend belief when they fly away with Pan; I -and I believe Barrie as well - want to do exactly the same thing. This "backstory" brings Never-Never Land to the cheap, shoddy world of the paper moon and the cardboard sky.
When did the fairy tale die? Have we lost enough faith in everything, in God, in imagination, in the ability to suspend belief for the sake of a good tale, that we have to know why Peter Pan can fly, or how Captain Hook got his name? Apparently so. We want to be an insider now, someone knowing the story before it happens, looking for clues, having to know, and know now, why things happen, not that they just happen. We can't take it on faith any more that Peter Pan can fly, that he can lose his shadow, that the Lost Boys were once a simpering band of of orphans, rather than another bunch of boys who won't grow up no matter what anyone says, because no one is bathing in asking the why's behind the story. Pearson and Barry could have written an exciting Peter Pan tale, instead they answer the first easy question that comes to mind.
Yes, when I read stories to my children, I get a lot of questions: why this, and how come that? I like to say, "What do you think," and we discuss their answers. But more often than not, I just say, "Let's see if we can fund out by reading some more." I love to see them get wrapped up in the stories, to genuinely worry that the terrible giants will eat the heroine on Roald Dahl's "The BFG." we can find out through our own imagination, through deduction and inference, what is likely to happen, and we're often surprised to find out that what we though would happen does indeed come to pass. I don't get that from Pearson and Barry.
I look at stories like Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, even J.R.R. Tolkein's works, where exposition is nonexistent or kept to a minimum, and I realize I just love them for the stories. I don't want to know why the Hatter is mad, nor why the Duchess' cook has her pepper fetish, nor why the Queen of Hearts plays croquet with hedgehogs and flamingoes. I love the stories for the sheer fairy-tale, the nonsense, the ability to leave this world for another that is like the one I'm in - unexplainable.
So, too, do I think of Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton's version. I don't believe the exposition - the addition of Willy Wonka's father, Wonka's childhood, and such - is necessary. I don't know why I need Wonka's backstory. Exposition to a point is fine, but I'm beginning to feel about it as Mark Twain felt about adjectives: "When you see an adjective, kill it.""
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