Peter Pan

J. M. Barrie's story of Peter Pan, the boy who can fly and refuses to grow up, exists as a stage play and as the novel Peter and Wendy. Peter loses his shadow while slipping away from the Darling home, and when he returns for it he wakes Wendy, who helps reattach it. Peter learns she knows plenty of bedtime stories and asks her to come to Neverland and act as mother to his gang of Lost Boys, and her brothers John and Michael fly along. The island holds fairies, mermaids and pirates under Captain Hook, Peter's nemesis. Barrie drew on his friendship with the Llewelyn Davies family and later gave the copyright to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

Richard Branson put it on the 65-book lifetime reading list he made for World Book Day.