Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs is a young adult novel about a teenager named Jacob who tries to overcome the terror of finding his grandfather’s body the night his grandfather, Abe, died. Jacob is convinced he saw a monster that night, but it is attributed to the over-active imagination that Abe encouraged Jacob to have through the unbelievable stories of Abe’s childhood. Abe told Jacob of boys who could lift entire boulders and girls who had to be tied down or they would float away like a balloon. Jacob’s father later explained that Abe spent most of his childhood on an island in Wales in an orphanage during World War II, while Abe’s family was executed during the Holocaust.

After going through some of his grandfather’s things, Jacob decides to go to the island where Abe grew up. After much convincing from the family therapist, Jacob’s father allows the trip and even comes along. While on the island, Jacob uncovers the ruins of the orphanage and more. Something about the island makes Jacob believe that Abe’s stories weren’t fictional. And something is about to show him he is right.

I read this book in about a week, which is fast for me because I’m a slow reader. The flow of the novel is perfect. There are a lot of details that are necessary for the reader to understand about the world Riggs create and he presents them in a timely manner, while still creating suspense.

There are photographs presented throughout the novel to accompany the text. The photographs, which if you read the back of the book are all actual old-fashioned photographs that were found and not taken for the soul purpose of the book, couple well with the text and outstanding stories offered by Riggs.

This is definitely set for the young adult crowd. Jacob is a teenager going through an average teenager struggle like falling in love for the first time, hating his first job and discovering skills he doesn’t know he has. But it also like the Roald Dahl books of our childhood. In fact, I could see many aspects of The Witches and The BFG involved in this novel.

Though I won’t tell you the ending, I will say that Riggs left the ending ambiguous to a series to follow, which I will buy in a heartbeat. I give Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children five stars—don’t put this book down.