What happens when Never Grew Up affects an entire setting. This is where an entire area, often an Adventure Town, is entirely populated and governed by children.
They might actually be children, or they might actually be Really 700 Years Old, but they will always at least look like little kids.
The trope name, which comes from the name of the Magical Land in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, is something of a misnomer, since being in Neverland didn't actually stop anyone from growing older, though it works that way in many adaptations.
Sister Trope to Lady Land, where most of the inhabitants are adults, just monogender.
Not to be confused with the game developer Neverland.
Examples
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Literature
- Cittagazze in His Dark Materials. The Spectres suck the soul out of anyone who has hit puberty.
- In Everlost by Neal Shusterman, the titular Everlost is populated by ghost children who are Really 700 Years Old. One of the oldest-looking children was fifteen at the time of death.
- In A World Out of Time by Larry Niven, the protagonist ends up (via a combination of suspended animation and time dilation) on a distant future Earth ruled by immortal, unaging children, the result of an immortality treatment that only worked on the prepubescent.
Live-Action TV
- The Reality Show Kid Nation was based off this trope.
- The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Miri" contains a fairly dark example: A planet of long-lived, unaging children who sicken and die upon reaching long-delayed adolescence.
- The same principle was the basis for the New Zealand After the End kids drama The Tribe.
- The Stargate Atlantis episode "Childhood's End" features a set of villages populated entirely by children (and young adults) because they commit ritual suicide upon turning 24. This is revealed to be the result of an Ancient setting up a forcefield on the planet to protect them from the Wraith, but because the shield was only so big they turned to Population Control.
- Naturally, Syfy's miniseries Neverland, which serves as an Origin Story for Peter Pan, and "explains" that no one ages in Neverland because it's on a planet in the center of the universe, so time stands still for anyone there.
Music
Neil Young's "Somewhere" Song "Sugar Mountain" (although it's really about being evicted from childhood itself):
- "Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain,
With the barkers and the colored balloons
You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain,
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon"
Video Games
- The Kokiri Forest area in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Interestingly, it's never revealed why the the Kokiri are immortal, if it's due to all the fairies that congregate there, or if it's because of the mysterious protection of the Deku Tree. (The implication in the sequel Wind Waker is that the wooden Koroks are what the Kokiri transformed into after the Great Flood.)
- Youngtown in EarthBound Beginnings, due to Alien Abduction of all of the adults.
- Little Lamplight in Fallout 3 has been populated entirely by children for nearly two hundred years. It's not clear how they replenish their population, but citizens are banished to Big Town on their eighteenth birthdays.
Webcomics
- Tales of the Questor features this with the elves - due to a goof by a now-reviled elven king (who wanted his people to be able not to die of old age and apparently went to a Literal Genie for his wish) elves are perpetually young - but not long-lived. They only live to about twenty or so, and then die of 'old age'. The result is that most of the elven territories are inhabited by half-wild children. To make things even worse, it's implied that, as a result, their civilization has gone from being able to match the humans or even the Sidhe to something out of Lord of the Flies. Half-elves, although longer-lived, still have much briefer lifespans than humans or Raccoonan - they only get anywhere from ten to twenty years more. There is allegedly an artifact out there somewhere that can fix the problem, but it's missing so it looks like our hero Quentyn has another item to keep an eye out for in his grand quest.
Western Animation
- Codename: Kids Next Door: During a Chase Scene, Number 1 crashes and wakes up on a Utopian island inhabited entirely by children. He soon learns he's actually inside a Lotus-Eater Machine.
