A week later, Pearson, a former singer/songwriter who lives in St. Louis, was in Miami to perform with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a garage band of baby-boom writers, including Stephen King and Amy Tan, who play at literary benefits. He was staying with a friend and bandmate, humorist Dave Barry.

"We're a terrible band," Barry says, "but Ridley's a fine bass player, and as our totally incompetent lead guitarist, I have learned to follow his cues."

So when Pearson mentioned a prequel to "Peter Pan" and asked if Barry wanted to collaborate on it, a writing partnership immediately was formed.

Barry had never collaborated with another writer. "I've always had a hard-enough time collaborating with myself," he says. "But it was such an intriguing idea, and I figured if I could work with anybody, it'd be Ridley. He's my buddy; I trust him."

Ridley Pearson

Dave Barry

There have been several sequels to "Peter Pan," but "Starcatchers" may be the first prequel to the enduring tale of a boy who won't grow up. The original story, Barry says, "represents a wonderful escape, for children especially, from the confinements of a world run by grownups."

Every kid dreams of running away, Pearson says, "but how many fly, and don't come back for a while and don't miss home?" Self-propelled flight adds to the appeal: "We all dream of it. Even Erica Jong (who wrote "Fear of Flying"). And pirates and magic dust and mermaids. It has everything kids think of, even in this 'Lord of the Rings'/'Star Wars' world."

Barrie's story has inspired musicals and movies, animated and otherwise. Barry has memories of the 1955 TV adaptation: "Mary Martin flying around in tights, hung from wires. I thought, 'Wait a minute. That's a lady.' "

"Peter Pan" inspired Michael Jackson to name his California ranch Neverland. (No comment from Pearson and Barry.) And it has given a name to the Peter Pan Syndrome, which afflicts men who act like boys. Barry says he's not mature enough yet to be compared to Peter Pan. There's a scholarly book, "Now or Neverland: Peter Pan and the Myth of Eternal Youth: A Psychological Perspective on a Cultural Icon."

And coming in November is a movie, "Finding Neverland," starring Johnny Depp as Barrie, the Scottish playwright who befriends a widowed mother of four and creates a fantasy world for her boys. The youngest was Peter. "Pan" comes from the Greek god of the woodlands.

'We just ... got writing'

Barry, 57, has written two novels, including "Big Trouble," which was made into a movie, and 23 collections of humor. Pearson, 51, has published 20 novels, most recently, "The Body of Peter Hayes."

Neither Barry nor Pearson had written for kids before; they just wanted to write an exciting story that would explain how Peter learned to fly and came to live on an Indian-and-pirate-infested island called Neverland.

"We didn't do a lot of analyzing," Pearson says. "We wrote a novel our kids could read and one that didn't speak down to its readers. Beyond that, we just sat down and got writing."

They started, in a sense, with Barrie's ending.

"When you look creatively at the classic," Pearson says, "there's just so much to work with: a boy who can fly, a scantily clad fairy who never leaves his side, a boy who never grows up, a shadow left behind in London, a mystical dog, a connection between Wendy's mother and Peter that is never explained. Oh, and how did Peter meet Captain Hook? And who is Captain Hook?"

"Peter and the Starcatchers" answers only some of those questions, but Pearson and Barry have plans for a trilogy of prequels.

Adventure sets sail

"Starcatchers" opens as Peter and other wards of home for "wayward boys" are shipped off to be servants of a cruel island king who, word has it, feeds his underachieving staff to a pet snake who once ate the king's father.

On board the ship, the Never Land, Peter meets and is smitten by a mysterious, headstrong girl named Molly who, the authors hint, may be related to Barrie's original Wendy.

With Peter's help, Molly tries to safeguard the ship's secret cargo, a magical, elevating material called "starstuff," the stuff that Tinker Bell will later find useful.

But the most feared pirate on the seas, Black Stache, who loves other people's misery, and his not-so-able assistant, Smee, also want the starstuff. In the wrong hands, it could be bad news for everyone who's not a pirate.

After encounters with a hurricane, talking dolphins, jealous mermaids and a supersize crocodile, the survivors end up shipwrecked on an island where the natives have good reason not to welcome tourists.

Pearson began the collaboration writing a sample chapter. Barry rewrote it, Pearson rewrote the rewrite, then Barry rewrote that. Both say it wasn't as contentious as it sounds. "It seemed so natural to write this together," Pearson says. "I love to plot and get detailed and complicated. Dave loves to keep things simple and find the humorous angle."

They worked mostly by e-mail, developing what Pearson calls a "third voice that's neither mine nor Dave's, but ours." Barry calls it a case of "Vulcan mind-meld."

Pearson credits Barry with the idea for the treasured starstuff, a key plot device that's "a magical stroke that provides the explanation, the internal logic, of why Peter can fly."