Book 6: Peter and the Starcatchers

ABCABC -- I have detected a pattern! I read a real adult book, then a SF book, and then a kids book.  Since I've repeated this twice, it is now a tradition, so it will be painful to change.  Hmm.  This may help me pick my next book.

I just finished Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.  They wrote this as a prequel to Peter Pan, so it explains how he gets his powers and his fairy and his peers the pirate, the savages, and the mermaids.  Which is all fine and a decent standard boy adventure story, complete with lack of mortality (I prefer the corpse littered stories of Joan Aiken, but I understand some men are squeamish about such things), but the unexamined misogyny really disturbed me.  Females are few and far between in this book; there is the useless and fat governess, the intrepid girl heroine who credits Peter with saving the day, and the mermaid.  Which stuck out like a sore thumb was the instant hatred the girl and the mermaid have for each other, supposedly because of their jealousy over Peter.  Because of course the only thing that matters for females is their connection with the alpha male; tiny issues like saving the world pale behind such primal instincts.  By the way, it never occurs to any of the other boys to even consider resenting Peter's special relationship with the girl; after all, the boys are friends and it's impossible to imagine them squabbling over a girl.  They barely even mention her, in fact.  Humph.