James V. Hart

An intelligent book about a young Captain Hook that details all the important aspects of his youth from why he is the way he is to how he got his name. Young King Jas. enters Eton wearily and finds almost immediately the enemies (named Darling of course, like the children in the original book), friends (Jolly Roger of course!) and love that his life has been missing. His adventures continue to entertain fluidly transforming from one to another. J.V.Hart really found the comfortable medium show more where the reader roots for James while still seeing the evil that you will someday come to expect from Capt. Hook. Everything is here: dastardly deeds, poisonous pet spiders, duals to the death, fires, escapes, mutinies! The whole book reads well and comes highly recommended for a bit of light reading. show less

I agree with the reviewer who wasn't too impressed with the first half (Eton) but enjoyed it a lot more once they went to sea. I did enjoy pondering the juxtaposition between Jas and bully Arthur Darling in this book and bully Hook and the children of Arthur Darling in Peter Pan. I also got a kick out of the fact that James Mathew B(astard) and J. M. Barry share the same initials. Coincidence? I think not.

Capt. Hook is possibly one of the most notorious villians in childrens literature. He’s certainly my favourite, so I had to grab this book the moment I saw it. J.V. Hart (the same man who wrote the screenplay for the movie Hook) has written about Hook’s childhood, and how he went about becoming the character we all know and love him to be.

It starts when James begins to attend a boys boarding school. He is the bastard child of a Lord of the Queen’s court, and is judged by the fact that show more he is a bastard by most people he meets. The kids at Eton are, for the most part, exactly the same. And oh, the kids at Eton are horrible! Or at least, the older kids at Eton are horrible. James is a determined, though, to not let the older kids lord it over him right from the beginning when he draws his umbrella (as I’m sure it’s only because he didn’t have a sword handy) on one Arthur Darling. This, of course, is only the beginning of the animosty between the two boys.

Things escalate when James, the girl he loves, and his best friend, attempt to commandeer a boat. And this is where all the fun starts, let me tell you.

You know how with some books, you can fall in love in an instant? You were enjoying it alright, but then all of a sudden out of the blue, BAM! You’re in love with it. That happened to me in the middle of the fifth chapter of this book, with one sentence:

The vengeful young man had discovered a universal truth that his adversary had known since his early days with Aunt Emily entertaining her theatrical friends – for every life situation there is a fitting quote from the hand of Shakespeare.

Any book that talks about how wonderful quoting Shakespeare is, is automatically going to be a wonderful book in my opinion. Especially a children’s book! It’s like… a wonderful dream come true where everyone uses wonderful phrases and words and … oh hurrah!

Also, for someone who loves the bratty kids that everyone else seems to hate, I was certainly in my element. There were so many kids to hate in this book! Okay, maybe not that many, but Hook was certainly a little brat, and then there was Arthur Darling and his gang who were completely horrible too. It was wonderful! I couldn’t decide who I loved all the more, and that’s very unusual for me.

The book has also given me a bit more of insight into the character of Hook. Now, though, I’m really wanting to see the first couple of meetings between Hook and Pan. show less

A decent enough story. It improved greatly after James went to sea. There was far too much "Etonian" slang and I kept having to go Google for definitions. A glossary might have been handy.It's a good story speculating on the childhood of the villainous Capt. Hook... it's not spectacular. It didn't make me want to read the sequels.