Book 2015-3: Hook's Revenge

Hook's Revenge, by Heidi Schulz

The PAL reviewing this book picked it up at the Disney Publishing booth.

I expected to hate this book because I really love James M. Barrie's original play, Peter Pan. Most of the retellings or back stories upset me. Children and adults are different, or at least they are supposed to be. In modern times adults have abrogated their responsibilities when raising children. Kids are naturally selfish and self-centered and adults are supposed to teach them that other people matter. I hated "Hook" and it's message that adults need to embrace their inner child. Adults need to embrace their responsibilities as grown-ups or we won't have any elders, just old people.

I don't know what made me start to read "Hook's Revenge." Maybe it was the first paragraph: "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 had just finished reading the sampler for "Vanishing Games" so my mind was on pirates.

I loved this book. Jocelyn is Captain Hook's daughter and her maternal grandfather is trying to raise her to be a lady so she'll have good marital prospects. They're already poor because her father is notorious. Her mother finally left her father

A young gentlewoman eloped with Captain Hook, the notorious pirate. She left him to have her baby at her parents' home, only to die leaving her daughter to be raised by her maternal grandfather. He is trying to raise Jocelyn to be a lady so she'll have better marital prospects. It isn't working so he decides to send her to Miss Eliza Crumm-Biddlecomb's Finishing School for Young Ladies.

So far it sounds like a cliché–a story told and retold but never as well as in Francis Hodgson Burnett's "The Little Princess." But it's not because Jocelyn's father is ever-present, though never physically. When a letter from Hook is finally delivered to her, she runs away from school to fulfill his request.

I loved Jocelyn. I loved the Smee as he is portrayed here. I loved all the pirates, and the Indians, and the fairies and mermaids. I loved the whole darned book.