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excritos's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Graphic: Death and Murder
Moderate: Violence
mitzee's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
- The prose was funnier than I thought it would be.
- Some parts were actually more graphic than I had expected it to be.
like the descriptions of pirates killing people - Definitely contains the same racist tropes I first learned about in the Disney film and actually contains racist slurs, which I was not expecting.
- I also didn’t expect to dislike Peter so much.
Graphic: Bullying, Toxic friendship, and Racial slurs
Moderate: Murder
Minor: Animal death
rusame's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Moderate: Child death, Hate crime, Kidnapping, Murder, Racism, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Colonisation, Death, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Grief, Misogyny, Sexism, and Violence
nmirra's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Minor: Racism and Murder
writewithapendragon's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Moderate: Racial slurs, Abandonment, Bullying, Murder, Racism, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Child death, Death of parent, Grief, Kidnapping, Sexism, Misogyny, and Toxic friendship
Minor: Cultural appropriation, Cursing, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Violence, Animal death, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, War, Murder, Racism, Sexism, Abandonment, and Racial slurs
bookdragon_jess's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Graphic: Racial slurs
Moderate: Racism and Violence
Minor: Murder, Child death, and Sexism
lisannelouwerse's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
1) Peter Pan is a selfish dick. Nevertheless it is suggested that at least two female characters are in love with him. Not really the example we want to give to young girls, is it?
2) So much sexism!! The only reason why the Lost Boys want Wendy in Neverland is so that she can make their food, clean the house and mend their clothes. I understand that this book was written in 1911 and things were different back then, but that does not mean I have to approve of it.
3) The language used was quite difficult so I am glad I read it on my ereader and could look up words in the dictionary. But again, this is probably because it is written more than a 100 years ago, and it is more a lack of my vocabulary than it is a fault of the writer.
Apart from these remarks, the story was fun to read and very original. Barrie's imagination is out of this world.
Graphic: Sexism and Murder
kat_mayerovitch's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first: this book is racist. Like, super, grossly, offensively racist. If you saw the movie or the play, know that it's worse than that. Hoo boy, don't read this book to children.
All that said, this book is cynical as heck, darkly funny, and scathing in its descriptions. The narrator hates ... pretty much all of the characters. The adults, including Captain Hook, are obsessed with appearances and social class. The women and girls are weak. The boys are gullible. Peter is arrogant beyond belief and can only stay innocent because he loses track of how many people (adults and children) he's murdered. Perhaps the only character portrayed as being worthy of admiration is Nana, the dog. Which ... is fair. Dogs are great. Put Nana in charge of everything. But still.
So, is it worth a read? Sure, if you're curious. It was fun to see so many lines I remember from the stage play. If you like cutting humor, sure. It's quite a roast. But otherwise, there are plenty of better children's classics to return to.
Graphic: Racism and Racial slurs
Moderate: Violence, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Sexism
booksthatburn's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
I enjoyed the feeling that there's no inherent division between magical and mundane, that Mrs. Darling walks in her children's thoughts and they were dreaming of Neverland long before ever setting foot on its shores. The way Nana is a nurse (nanny) and a dog, wholly both and frequently subject to the stigma of being a dog. She has days off, dresses the children, and has the respect of her employers, but also gets put in the kennel when Mr. Darling gets upset at her. There's a lot of witty observations about the societal place of women and girls, about the essence of children as joyful but heartless (what I would describe as not yet having a fully developed pre-frontal cortex, i.e. literally not yet able to fully consider consequences and to think of other people as having inner lives or experiencing hurt in the way one knows oneself can).
It has racism so baked into it that even if there were no other issues I could not recommend reading it. There's the explicit assumption that everyone other than the tribe members are British and therefore white, which is unlikely (especially for pirates). The book freely uses "white" to describe anyone not in the tribe generally, and the pirates in particular. The portrayal of Tiger Lily and her tribe was a checklist of racist stereotypes about North American Indigenous people. The most obvious issue is the constant use of a racial slur used to refer to them as a group, but that's not the only thing. The book's gaze clusters the tribe with animals, and refers to them with language that feels designed to treat them as inhuman. There's also the problem that putting Indigenous people on a magical island which has fairies and mermaids it treats the tribe as being equally fictional and fantastical as either of those non-existent creatures, which does harm to living Indigenous people then and now. Tiger Lily's most relevant contribution to the plot is to do something heroic off-page and then need to be rescued from death. On its own that feels related to the sexism which affects characters like Wendy and Mrs. Darling, but I don't think it can be separated from the racist portrayal of her tribe, since it doesn't deem her exploits worthy of being shown at all. At least when Wendy stands aside while the boys and men fight she gets a bunch of description of what she contributes before and after. Tiger Lily just gets rescued and then basically vanishes from the story. While I'm on the subject of sexism, for every really great insight about how sexism affects women and girls in the contemporary society, the narrator says something that just feels sexist and off. Like it does a great job of showing what is going on, but only realizes that half of the problems it portrays are problems at all. And that's before we get to the idea that Hook only has intuition because he has a feminine side, that Smee is portrayed as strange or weak for having a sewing machine, or the way that fatphobia is essential but unexamined in a pivotal plot event.
I'm glad to have read it because I've read so many other version of this story, but I doubt I'll ever read it again and I don't recommend that anyone else try. If you're interested in the story but are hoping for less racism then I recommend perusing my list of retellings I've read, for PETER PAN and otherwise.
Graphic: Racial slurs
Moderate: Grief, Sexism, Fatphobia, Kidnapping, Child abuse, Violence, Murder, Death, and Racism
Minor: Death of parent and Animal death
torimc's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Death, Murder, and Violence
Barrie refers to indigenous peoples as “redskins.” I know this was published a long time ago, but just want people to be aware of that because that it something that would probably not slide if it had been written today.