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Loading... Peter and the Starcatchersby Dave BarryLibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendationsLoading...
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. An engaging story of how Peter became the legendary "Peter Pan." Full of action, humor, and high sea adventure. An exciting story about the life of Peter Pan, before he gets to Never Land. A very suspenseful story line that moves quickly and keeps the read interested and wanting more. A perfect mixture of fantasy and reality. I loved how the setting changed with each chapter to keep the reader wondering what was coming next. If I were to use this book in my class, it would most likely be as a read aloud. A prequel to the Peter Pan story, that explains how Peter and the lost boys got to Never Land and the struggles they faced trying to protect the world from the powerful starstuff. As a lover of the original Peter Pan, I found this "prequel" to be both clever and fascinating. 0.055 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0786854456, Hardcover)Humorist Dave Barry and suspense writer Ridley Pearson have clearly taken great delight in writing a 400-plus page prequel of sorts to Scottish dramatist J.M. Barrie's beloved Peter Pan stories. The result is a fast-paced and fluffy pirate adventure, complete with talking porpoises, stinky rogues, possible cannibals, a flying crocodile, biting mermaids, and a much-sought-after trunk full of magical glowing green "starstuff." Ever hear of Zeus? Michelangelo? Attila the Hun? According to 14-year-old Molly Aster they all derived their powers from starstuff that occasionally falls to Earth from the heavens. On Earth, it is the Starcatchers' job to rush to the scene and collect the starstuff before it falls into the hands of the Others who use its myriad powers for evil.On board the ship Never Land, an orange-haired boy named Peter, the leader of a group of orphaned boys being sent off to work as servants in King Zarboff the Third's court, is puzzled by his shipmate Molly's fantastical story of starstuff, but it inextricably binds him to her. Peter vows to help his new, very pretty friend Molly (a Starcatcher's apprentice) keep a mysterious trunk full of the stuff out of the clutches of the pirate Black Stache, a host of other interested parties, and ultimately King Zarboff the Third. The downright goofy, modern 8-year-old boy humor sometimes clashes with an old-time pirate sensibility, and the rapid-fire dialogue, while well paced, is far from inventive. Still, the high-seas hijinks and desert-island shenanigans will keep readers turning the pages. Greg Call's wonderful black-and-white illustrations are deliciously old-fashioned and add plenty of atmosphere to a silly, swashbuckling story that shows us how Peter Pan came to fly and why he, and his story, will never get old. (Ages 9 and older) --Karin Snelson (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:54 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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The conflict of the story centers around Molly and Peter (with the help of a friendly porpoise with whom Molly converses) working to keep the starstuff out of the hands of the dreaded Captain Black Stasch and his men, as well as the greedy clutches of Slank, who is part of the 'others'. All end up on a beautiful jungle island after a brutal storm, where they clash with the local natives who want to feed them to Mister Grin, a gigantic crocodile. In the end, as we would expect, Peter save the day with the help of some new friends, the mermaids.
When all is resolved it becomes clear how the tale of Peter Pan came to be and all relationships and conflicts for future encounters between characters such as Peter and Captain 'Hook' are firmly established. All in all, Peter and Starcatches is a terrific story full of vivid descriptions, exciting twists in action, and ideas that will tug at your heart and get you thinking. (