Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Pages: 348

Intended Audience: Teens and Mature Tweens

Genre: Supernatural

Notes for Parents: Scenes of violence.

The Inside Cover

A mysterious island.

An abandoned orphanage.

And a strange collection of very peculiar 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 Miss Peregrine’s children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

What the cover doesn’t tell you:

I can’t figure out exactly why, but the description on the cover feels a bit deceptive.

What’s good?

This is a quirky, mysterious, time-travel adventure interlaced with strange, vintage photographs and particularly peculiar characters. Jacob is an angst-ridden teen pulled into the bizarre past of his dead grandfather. The premise is clever, the plot ebbs and flows with unpredictability, and the overall effect is sufficiently creepy.

Best Part: The photographs.

What isn’t good?

The photographs. As much as I enjoyed looking at the photographs, I felt yanked out of the story every time I turned the page and saw a photograph. The author’s attempt to insert the pictures into the narrative was awkward and interrupted the flow of the story. I would have preferred a more in-depth development of the characters rather than the weak descriptions based, for the most part, on the photographs.

Worst part: By the end, the peculiarity felt too campy.

Recommendation þþooo

The first third or so of the book was fantastic. The author knows how to get out of the gate. However, the choppiness and lack of character development made this little more than an eccentric tale by the end. It’s a wonderful premise that, for me, fell short of expectations.

Riggs, Ransom. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Philadelphia: Quirk, 2011. (hardcover)