This has got to be the best story ever....other than the two that follow it..Its based off the Disney Peter Pan cartoon really. And is a Disney Book actually. It gives you all about how Peter and the lost boys came to the island and how it got its 'neverland' name. Everything has a start and I loved the rendition of the mermaids starting as fish, how Peter became able to fly, the infamous Crocodile, and tink! I really hope that a director with abilities to capture the essence of books, makes these three stories into a movie or better yet a television series!

I really enjoy this series! I read it to my brothers and they beg me to continue when its time to stop. The only thing that bothers me about this series is the sneaky (and completely unnecessary) sexual content. Nothing horrid, but enough to make me purposefully skip certain sentences. For instance, one character's governess flirts and possibly has a sexual relationship with one of the villains (implied), and the mermaids look like naked women from the waist up (they have long hair that supposedly covers them). Some other stuff I didn't think necessary to skip: a mermaid saves Peter from drowning and gives him CPR and in his dazed state he thinks its a kiss (pretty silly actually)- a pirate captain has a special sail made that is shaped like a corset (image included in the book). I definitely recommend this series, but read it yourself first, so you can choose to skip stuff or not. The bad guys are bad, the good guys are good, but nobody's perfect, even the heroes.

There is a certain magic to the original Peter stories because they are, well, magical. Fairies and magic are accepted as real and J. M. Barrie makes no excuses for that. The entire point of this story is that, rather than taking it on faith that these things exist, their origins need to be explained. Not only did this take the fun out of the story but it also left room to catch the abundant spelling and grammatical mistakes. If it had been anything BUT a Peter Pan story I probably would have liked it more. As it is, I feel the two 'versions' clash a bit.

I read this book aloud to my two children (8 and 11). The chapters are short and fast paced. Each night we would read two or three chapters before bed. (with a lot of begging for more) The characters are well developed and the pirate dialect is fun to read aloud. We were all laughing out loud. Some times the action was so exciting I couldn't get the words out fast enough. We enjoyed trying to figure out, as we were reading how it was connecting to Peter Pan. We were sad when it came to an end. We miss the characters . . . the good ones and the bad ones!

I was really disappointed with this book. I loved Peter Pan and its sort of poetic, never-stop style of writing that Barry was able to do. It was sort of like a child telling someone about an adventure. This book is written in the style that some adults seem to think that kids will find easy to read. I found it boring and bereft of the power Peter Pan had to make a person believe in the story. Peter Pan made me feel like a little kid. Peter and the Starcatchers was just a book.