"Miss Peregrines Home For Peculiar Children."
Ransom Riggs
Quirk Books
YA science fiction and fantasy.
One day, while scouting Barnes and Nobles after work, I came across a disturbingly interesting Book. (I tend to like disturbingly interesting things.) I walk over to the colorless dust cover and the first thing i notice is a little girl dressed in 1940's attire, hovering above the ground in a patch of woods. I see PECULIAR CHILDREN scrawled in white pencil and a Miss "something i cant pronounce immediately" typed neatly above it. I'm instantly in love with the weird and rip it from the shelf, flipping through the pages. Second thing i notice: PICTURES! disturbing ones! (another love of mine) And with tiny worded pages so its not a baby book you'll be finished with in five minutes! I love a good long book. I adore a series. I just hate parting with a good plot. As I was saying, PICTURES! and TINY WORDS! I went to skim the first page but the first two sentences slowed me down.
"i had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen. The first of these came as a terrible shock and, like anything that changes you forever, split my life into halves: Before and After."I tend to take notice to who the one writing is, reading their little biographies and remembering faces and names. I love to write, and I am always fascinated with the unique style of writing each author uses. And might i say Riggs did a pretty nice job catching my attention with the first couple of sentences. So I order the book on Amazon the next day and 3-5 business days after that i received my peculiars.
The setting is in the present, but our main character Jacob has a strong bond with his grandfather, a Polish WWII veteran, who everyone finds delusional, so you can technically say there are two "different" settings. Grandpa Portman tells Jacobs all these tales of children who who could levitate,
"Only she couldn't control herself too well, so sometimes we had to tie a rope around her to keep her from floating away!"who were invisible, could lift boulders over their heads, and one even had bees living inside of him! After Jacob grew up a bit, he began to listen to the rest of his family, believing that his stories were false and fabricated versions of the children from an orphanage he lived at in Wales. So when Jacob gets a phone call from his grandfather, he thinks nothing more of the old mans desire for the keys to his gun shed than the usual wild illusions haunting him from the harsh war. UNTIL he gets to the abandoned house, discovering a dying Grandpa Portman, torn apart in the woods behind the house by some thing he thinks he saw leaving the scene of the crime. After the funeral, Jacob is traumatized, not only his grandfathers death but by the strange haunting children in the pictures he had shown him when he was younger and the stories of the monsters he couldn't have possibly seen in the woods.
"Awful hunched-over ones with rotting skin and black eyes." - They stank like putrefying trash; they were invisible except for their shadows; a pack of squirming tentacles lurked inside their mouths and could whip out in an instant and pull you into their powerful jaws.After a few sessions with his new psychiatrist, Jacob decides to go on a two week vacation with his father to the tiny island off the coast of Wales, seeking closure. Except secrets begin unfurl. Secrets that change Jacob's life forever and he is suddenly forced to choose between two totally different lives that both belong to him.
If you think this book is going to be about ghosts stop thinking now.
Its much more complex then foggy little ghost children and old creepy pictures.
Let me start by saying I was pretty impressed at how he linked such an interesting tale to these vintage photographs he borrowed from collectors. (pictures can be seen in the video above) Some of the characters are seen more than once in the pictures, giving their stories a sense of confirmation. I could see how upset Bronwyn was when she was forced to wear a dress for her performance poster, and I could see her behind that camera in the picture of the children rowing away with the war ships sailing threateningly in the distance.
I finished this book around Thanksgiving and i will say, it took me on quite a spin. When i first started reading i was afraid I would be disappointed. I'm not used to reading books that aren't full of demon slaying and over-emotional hormones. But, as i said, I do tend to take notice to is writing and what they might have been thinking when they wrote each scene. Riggs took his time getting to the good stuff and i definitely respect him for that. So don't give up on him the first few chapters in. His first-person style of writing was crawling with amazingly eerie description and metaphors that i loved. By the time i got to that tiny isolated island i was eager to meet the peculiar children as well their mysterious headmistress Miss Peregrine.
SPOILER POINT!! (for those of you who have read the book here are some things that I loved.)
- The use of the nickname "The bird." I love how the orphans choose to refer to this little old lady as "the Bird" instead of Miss Peregrine. Although it does strongly relate to her ability.
-Enoch. He just might be my favorite. I can not tell you why. Maybe it's his smug little attitude, or maybe its all those animal hearts he was collecting in the basement for his little soldiers, but the picture of him with the dolls stole my heart. (as creepy as that may sound)
-Fiona's gift. Her shrubbed out version of Adam and how his finger was aligned perfectly to touch the tip of the bomb. Genius. And i like how the to naturalists end up snogging each other's face off in the garden. Cuties:)
-In some alternate universe, or perhaps some in another loop, Millard would be my lover. Maybe it's sheer curiosity. I just want to know what the invisible boy looks like.
-Tiny Olive and her lead shoes. haha. Its the gift of levitating gone wrong. But she makes the best of it. It's terribly cute.
-Wights haunt my dreams. I think I'd pee my pants if I ever saw a Hollow, but a wight. They're just too creepy.
-The picture of Abe and Emma at the end of the book. I have to say i love Emma's strong will and soft heart. She's not a girl you mess around with but she falls deep and protects those who she loves dearly. Wonderful heroine.
Wonderful book.
There is talk of a movie!
Although dates haven't been made.
BUT, i hear my favorita director, Mr. Burton
may be in on the project
as well as Jane Goldman who is also a
wonderful piece of screenwriter.
This should be good :)
AND COMING in SPRING 2013: the sequel to Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children. So sad we have to wait so long.
Until then, Stay peculiar;)
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