Book Review: The Child Thief

The Child Thief

Author: Alethea Komtis
Publisher:  HMH Book for Young Readers
Publish Date: May, 8 2012

Book Rating 3/5
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Publisher's Description 

Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief—and like all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are his friend for life, but his promised land is notNeverland.

Fourteen-year-old Nick would have been murdered by the drug dealers preying on his family had Peter not saved him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive and you never grow old. Even though he is wary of Peter's crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, New York City is no longer safe for him, and what more could he possibly lose?

There is always more to lose.

Accompanying Peter to a gray and ravished island that was once a lush, enchanted paradise, Nick finds himself unwittingly recruited for a war that has raged for centuries—one where he must learn to fight or die among the "Devils," Peter's savage tribe of lost and stolen children.

There, Peter's dark past is revealed: left to wolves as an infant, despised and hunted, Peter moves restlessly between the worlds of faerie and man. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must to stop the "Flesh-eaters" and save the last, wild magic in this dying land.

Book received:  Rented 

Why I Picked it up: Great book. This book is fast pace, wonderful and compelling, but it is not for young children. This is a dark book and will change how you view Peter. This is not Disney's Peter Pan, this is something else some darker and at times more sinister. The children here are not leaving home because it is a safe place, their home is not, some are slaves  many of the children a beat, raped, abused and murdered, the worst of it all is that it is treated as common place.  It is treated how it is depicted in society, that these things are too often common place. So if a young child reads this beware nightmare and questions. 

Now the sex and violence and profanity have a use in this story. They are part of the plot and often why the children want to leave home and words that are used by adults and thus later by children in situations that condone such language. This is a compelling story and our guide is Nick and at time Peter. 

This story of Peter stripes away the the thin veneer of kindness that we find in Disney and event the Barrie telling of this young boy and lays out the bones of this all. It reminds me of a comic done by  Zenascope Neverland, Hook and Tales Form Neverland. These are dark comics and not for children, fairytales were  originally for adults. 

Why I finished it: It was alive and had story that I knew but it was different. Darker and sadder.  

Who I would give it to: Any one who wants to known the darkside of fairytales 


Have a berry orange day,


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