He wore a russet-red fox pelt
Nibs's signature is a hooded fox skin — the fox's masked face pushed back off his brow like a hood, the brush-tail hanging down his back. In the Home Under the Ground, every Lost Boy has an animal; the fox is his.
Meet the Characters
The True Story of Nibs
The merriest, most reckless Lost Boy — the one who charges laughing at wolves.
Featured on the map at The Home Under the Ground · The Never Woods · House Falcon
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He carried a flint knife and a bandolier of acorn beads
Tucked in a strip of dark rawhide at his belt is a small flint knife with a bone handle wrapped in sinew. Across his chest he wears a bandolier of acorn beads — one bead for every adventure he's lived to tell.
Barrie called him the merriest of them all
In the book, Nibs is the bold and gay one — the Lost Boy who laughs first, runs fastest, and charges wolves instead of running from them. He is first to spot a wolf, and first up a tree.
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So — would you rather charge at the wolf, like Nibs, or climb the tallest tree to watch it pass?
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Family reading companion
The True Story of Nibs
A short bedtime version — one screen. Read it aloud together.
Beneath the great hollow tree in the middle of the Never Woods, there lived a band of boys who had no mothers and no fathers, and who called themselves the Lost Boys. This is the story of the merriest one of all. His name was Nibs.
Nibs was about ten years old, with tousled chestnut hair full of honey-blonde streaks from the Neverland sun, and hazel-brown eyes that flashed gold whenever he was up to something — which was almost always. His skin was warm and sun-browned, his knees were forever a little muddy, and he was, from morning till night, barefoot.
He wore a russet-red fox pelt as a hooded skin — the fox's masked face pushed back off his brow, its ears and empty eye-sockets sitting above his own hair, its brush-tail hanging down his back. Beneath it, a rough undyed tunic belted with a strip of rawhide, a small flint knife tucked in the belt, and across his chest a bandolier of acorn beads — one bead for every adventure he had lived to tell.
J.M. Barrie called him the bold and gay one — the Lost Boy who laughed first, ran fastest, and, when a wolf came slinking out of the trees, was the one who charged straight at it grinning. The other Lost Boys would climb. Nibs would go and meet it.
One night in the Home Under the Ground, when Wendy Darling had come to be their mother and told them stories by the lantern light, it was Nibs who could not sit still. He tumbled. He whooped. He crept up behind Tootles and startled him. And when Wendy finally said, quite firmly, that it was bedtime, it was Nibs who was the last to lie down — still grinning at the ceiling, still listening for the wolves.
He never grew older. He never lost a tooth. And somewhere in the Never Woods, if you listen very carefully on a windy night, you can still hear him — running through the ferns, laughing, chasing a wolf just to see if he can catch its tail.
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