Books like Hook's Daughter

Before I talk about how fun this story is, I have to make two confessions:1) I have never liked the Peter Pan story (with one exception);2) I internet-know the author and told her that if I ever met her in person, I would hug her face off and then I did meet her in person last year when she was touring for this very book and I did actually hug her face off. I even have a picture but I'm not going to share it because I don't want you to see how terrified Heidi looks in my vicious embrace because I would like you to believe she was happy to be face-hugged by me, the face-hugger.So let me just share the prologue of this book with you so that you will understand how I was...ahem...hooked right off the bat.It's called: Children Have Sticky Fingers and Ask Impertinent Questions <--see? Already funny!There have always been pirates. Why, even as far back as Eve, on the day she was considering whether or not to eat that apple, a pirate was most certainly planning to sail in and take it from her.I expect that you'd like to know about the most famous of all pirates, Captain James Hook. As I am the world's foremost expert on him, naturally you turned to me. Children come to me all the time, begging to hear what I know. I graciously seat them in a circle around me, lean in, and whisper, "Not a chance."I don't like children all that much.However, last Thursday I became an old man. It occurs to me that someday I will die. Like many my age, I hope that I may go peacefully, in the midst of a hostage situation or a failed arson attempt. But I digress......and there's more but I have tired of transcribing.Anyway, you can see there's a Snickety element going on, with the snark and delightful curmugdeonliness. But our narrator is only in the background (for now, at least) and the story centers on rough-n-tumble Jocelyn Hook, Cap't Hook's abandoned daughter.The general storyline is what you'd expect, only funny and more gory than I had anticipated. I'm not talking slasher film, here, but death and some of the less pleasant aspects of life are not covered over and I appreciate that because kids need to know. Plus, kids get a thrill from just that kind of thing. At least, I did...both when I was a kid and when I read this story last week.It's a fun adventure tale that puts a somewhat rotten, though delightful, girl front and center. Unlike Pippi Longstocking or others of her ilk, Jocelyn is flawed. She makes mistakes. She's not wacky-perfect, she's human. It's hard not to want to wrap her up in a hug, though she'd shank you if you tried. She's got a good heart, some pirate's greed, and she's more concerned about what she wants to do than how she affects others. She's a kid who hasn't been successfully molded by society.Much of the original cast shows up - Peter Pan and Tinkerbell along with a new set of Lost Boys. Mr. Smee. The ticking crocodile - but this story is cattywumpus enough that Peter is an afterthought, the crocodile is a huge menace, and Mr. Smee...ok, he's still Smee. Jocelyn is the anti-Wendy in this story and I love her for that because I have never liked Wendy. She pissed me off in the book, she pissed me off in the Disney movie, she just pisses me off all the time. But because there is no Wendy, no one caters to Peter except for his tribe of dimwits and for someone who has never enjoyed the original tale, I found this to be a great source of joy.So why not five full stars?Wellll...yeah, there's always one of these...it was Roger's fault.I liked Roger in the beginning. I liked that he was a balance to Jocelyn's crazypants, I liked that he was thoughtful and industrious and smart. And I liked that just as Jocelyn was learning important lessons from him, albeit unintentionally, they were separated.I didn't expect him to show up again in this book. I sort of thought Jocelyn was going to have her big adventure and then would realize that she can't, in fact, do everything her way on her own, that she does need others, and that would spur the second book (I already knew it was in the works so maybe that's why I pushed the storyline out so far...in my mind) to be about getting Roger back.It doesn't work out that way, though, (well, I mean, it does, just not in the ways I'd expected) and Roger's part in Neverland didn't appeal to me.It's a minor thing, though, a small part. It's not worth fretting over and I think I might be the only one on the planet who had that irkiness.All in all, this is a super fun book and I hope fourth-graders the country over read it and laugh and then go outside and have adventures.