By J. M. Barrie
Peter Pan won't grow up, and one night he flies the three Darling children off to Neverland — mermaids, Lost Boys, and Captain Hook and his pirates.
Peter Pan comes in through the Darling children's nursery window one night, hunting for his own lost shadow, and by the time he leaves he's taught Wendy, John, and Michael to fly and carried them off to Neverland. It's an island built out of a child's imagination: Lost Boys, mermaids, a fairy named Tinker Bell, a crocodile with a clock ticking away in its belly. The pirates answer to Captain Hook, who lost a hand to that crocodile and now lives in dread of the ticking, because the beast liked the taste and means to come back for the rest of him. Things build through chases and rescues to a real battle aboard the pirate ship, Peter against Hook. And underneath all the adventure there's a sadness: Peter gets to stay a child forever, but that's the very reason he can never keep the family he half wants.
If your child knows the movie and is ready for the book underneath it, this is the one, and it's richer, stranger, and a good deal darker than they'll expect. Barrie tells the whole thing in a knowing grown-up narrator's voice, the adventure genuinely moves, and the sadness running under it — a boy who trades growing up for never being able to be loved and kept — gives the story a weight that stays with a reader. A well-made hardcover with Bedford's or Rackham's illustrations is a lovely thing to own and hand down. One caveat I'd take seriously: the original text has a badly dated depiction of Native Americans (more below), so this is a read-with-you book rather than a hand-it-over-silently one.