Peter and the Starcatchers

Barry and Pearson make frequent allusions to J.M. Barrie’s classic novel Peter and Wendy (1911) to both acknowledge the source material and establish their novel as a separate text. Their allusions often offer additional context or reconfigure iconic elements of the original Peter Pan mythos: Peter Pan’s fairy sidekick Tinkerbell becomes a green bird transformed with starstuff into Peter’s magical guardian; a ship named the Never Land is the namesake of the realm of children’s imagination where Barrie’s story is set; Black Stache loses his hand to a crocodile, just like Captain Hook—but Peter is the one who cuts it off in the first place; starstuff replaces and augments the magical properties of fairy dust. Like Barrie’s original, the modern novel also includes pirates, native island people, orphaned British boys, a precocious young girl (Molly versus Wendy), and a brave, never-aging boy who can fly.

Barry and Pearson also make more subtle references to their source text. Mr. Grin waddling after Black Stache as though the reptile has “all the time in the world” (439) references the clock swallowed by the crocodile in Peter and Wendy. The image of the children holding hands as they fly out of Mr.