Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

225 pages

"When the Darling children are visited by Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, he convinces them to fly away to the island of Neverland, where children never grow up! There they meet the Lost Boys, a giant crocodile, and the evil Captain Hook." -Back Cover

For years we've had an "8 O'Clock Club" at our house. My mom started it with my siblings when they were young and we adopted the tradition when my kids were young. Its name came from reading at 8:00, right before kids went to bed. When my kids were younger that's what I would do, but as they've grown up we've changed the times but it's always been called the 8 O'Clock Club. The last few summers we've read in the afternoon and I've read out loud to the girls while they eat treats. I was planning on doing that again this year but my almost-15-year-old daughter told me that it's hard for her to concentrate when someone else is reading. I figured they'd be getting too old for me to read to them eventually. I still want us to experience the joy of reading something together so this summer I decided to try something different.

We've seen every Peter Pan movie but we've never read the book so I thought we should. I went on Amazon and bought cheap copies, enough for each member of our family to have one, even my husband who doesn't really have time to read. Then I gave us all a deadline for finishing. Those who finish get to participate in an activity of some sort related to the book. We all finished (even my husband who read it while he was at scout camp) and then we had a treasure hunt.

As far as the book goes, Tinkerbell swears, which bothered my kids because they don't. My youngest crossed out the word Tinkerbell uses (a##) in her copy. The book is more violent than the movie and because it was written so long ago had some references that we didn't quite understand. Knowing the story definitely helped and it was fun to see the differences, to see how some movies quote the book line for line and some change parts. It was written in a very whimsical way and had some tongue-in-cheek humor that I found pretty funny. I had to read most of it out loud to my 10-year-old because she really struggled with it. The vocabulary is probably more high-school level and I had to explain a lot of things, but we finished two hours before the activity after reading 35 pages out loud! I was proud of her for sticking with it. This month's book will be easier.