Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Pecu­liar Children

(Ama­zon, Goodreads)

by Ran­som Riggs

(Ama­zon, Goodreads, Twit­ter, Web­site)

Pub­lished by Quirk Books, June 2011

A mys­te­ri­ous island. An aban­doned orphan­age. And a strange col­lec­tion of very curi­ous pho­tographs. It all waits to be dis­cov­ered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Pecu­liar Chil­dren, an unfor­get­table novel that mixes fic­tion and pho­tog­ra­phy in a thrilling read­ing expe­ri­ence. As our story opens, a hor­rific fam­ily tragedy sets sixteen-​​year-​​old Jacob jour­ney­ing to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he dis­cov­ers the crum­bling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Pecu­liar Chil­dren. As Jacob explores its aban­doned bed­rooms and hall­ways, it becomes clear that the chil­dren who once lived here—one of whom was his own grandfather—were more than just pecu­liar. They may have been dan­ger­ous. They may have been quar­an­tined on a des­o­late island for good rea­son. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

This was an extra­or­di­nary book.  I wasn’t sure what to expect as I had only perused it while at the booth at the BEA this past May.  I only knew that I wanted to read it because the cover was intrigu­ing.  I wasn’t to dis­ap­pointed.  I was expect­ing more of an adult story, but while the story was more young adult and not what was expected, it was very good nonethe­less.  The story is well devel­oped and you are drawn into the story of the orphan­age just as Jacob is and you begin root­ing for him from the begin­ning.  As the story unfolds, you are greeted with pic­tures of the char­ac­ters of the orphan­age, and yet you won­der, are they real?  I strongly believe that with­out the pic­tures, this story would have been one that was tossed aside and did not cre­ate such buzz as has been sur­round­ing this book.

The story leaves with a good cliff-​​hanger, but also, if Riggs should not write a sequel, the book can stand on its own and still be fantastic.

As for the pic­tures, I won­dered through­out if they were Pho­to­shopped for the book or if they were real pho­tos.  They cer­tainly have cer­tain real­is­tic qual­i­ties to them.  I was happy to learn in a note at the back, that other than a few edits to a cou­ple of the pic­tures (so they fit into the story line), they are all orig­i­nal and untouched pic­tures from times past.  I have to won­der if Riggs had the idea for the story and then found the pho­tos or if the pho­tos inspired the story.  Either way, Riggs use of the pho­tos to illus­trate the story draw the reader into the world of Jacob and the pecu­liar chil­dren.  I would be happy to meet some of these pecu­liar chil­dren myself.

This one made it to my keeper shelf because of the pic­tures and the story.  The details, the pho­tos, the story, they all drew me in and I know that I will want to re-​​read and re-​​live the story over and over again.  Need­less to say, you should read this book.