Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

 

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Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs was written in 2011 and published by Quirk Books. It is a Young Adult supernatural/paranormal fantasy book with a historical fiction twist. This is Rigg’s debut novel, utilizing odd antique photographs to create a mythological world where certain people have strange powers and monsters hunt them for their souls. This book was adapted directed by Tim Burton into a movie in 2016 staring Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, and Ella Purnell, to some mixed reviews.

I picked this book up at my library in order to prepare for the fourth book—The Map of Days—released October 2^nd, 2018. My cousins had read this before the movie came out and told me to read it but it really didn’t seem like my thing so I put it off. I watched the movie and thought it was okay . . . and put off reading it. Now that I work at a library and with the fourth book—a surprise to fans everywhere—coming out, I figured it was time that I actually read it.

Spoiler Alert!

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children follows Jacob who is from a well-off family in Florida. He discovers his grandfather dead—possibly murdered—and is trying to come to grips with his death. The police rule it an animal attack but Jacob isn’t convinced after a cryptic message from his grandfather leads him to wonder if any of the old stories had some truth to them. He convinces his parents to let him go to the island where his grandfather lived during World War II and try to track down Miss Peregrine, the woman who raised him, or the other children who grew up with him. Once there, Jacob discovers the peculiars, his own unique heritage, and a danger to the entire world.

This book moves between the modern world and a single day during World War II. Everyone in the past is stuck in a loop of a single day and only peculiars are able to pass between the two times. Miss Peregrine teaches and guards the children, who are easily in their 80s or older yet are stuck as children and young teens because of the loop. Each child has their own powers, ranging from invisibility to controlling air, to raising the dead or controlling bees. They stay in the loop to protect themselves against creatures known as wrights and their monsters called hollows; soul-less beasts that hunt peculiars in an attempt to gain back their own souls. As events unfold, Jacob is forced to choose between his life with his parents, and a life with the peculiars. He can choose to be a human and live without protection from the wrights or he can live and protect the other children while forming a romantic relationship with Emma Bloom, the one-time sweetheart of his grandfather. When a wright captures Miss Peregrine, Jacob makes his decision and sets out with the other children to rescue her.

As I said, I didn’t pick this up for a long time because it never really struck me as something I’d be interested in. After reading through it within a couple of days, I have to say I was a little disappointed. The novel has a really slow start with the narrator “all knowing” or “recounting my life” which in general annoy me. I find that kind of narrator tends to lean towards grandiose though thankfully this doesn’t seem to be the case with Jacob’s narration.

The book takes it’s time to build momentum, giving us time to learn about the different characters and their world and the rules, but there’s no real conflict outside of some jealous characters and trying to learn the truth about Jacob’s grandfather. He isn’t even being forced into staying with the other peculiars because Miss Peregrine wants him to choose for himself if he wants to stay, but that doesn’t really create conflict. There’s a little tension between Jacob and his family since they think he’s a little nuts after his grandfather’s death, but even that doesn’t really put a lot of pressure on the story. It’s just there.  On the island, his father attempts to enforce some rules but never follows through with them and Jacob easily slips away whenever he feels like it with little more than a lecture and a threat to call his mother and therapist back in the states as punishment.

I also had a problem with Miss Peregrine. I get she’s old and is one of the guardians of peculiars and she knows more about the mysteries of this world than nearly all the others, but I thought she was a bit full of herself. She’s constantly telling the children that the future is bad yet she also acknowledges the kids are aging past their years ad going insane because of it. Yet that’s better than moving them a little further into the present for some reason? I honestly would think there was a better solution.

When the wrights are revealed, I found it strange that the same wright has been following Jacob his whole life, but it’s waited this long before it decided to strike? Why? It didn’t make sense to me. The ending conflict also felt unnatural. We’re never given any clues to the danger beyond the warnings by Miss Peregrine—though it’s framed as things Jacob and the children don’t have to worry about—and the death of Jacob’s grandfather. Everything suddenly rushes to an end without really building towards it or convincing me we earn the ending. Even with Miss Peregrine gone and the loop closed, there is no reason for Jacob to stay with the children other than the fact he feels responsible for protecting them. He has the opportunity to go home but chooses to continue to involve himself in a world he really doesn’t understand.

Over-all, the entire book is world building. What are the peculiars, what are their lives and their world like compared to our everyday lives? The old photographs add to this and create a great image for readers to imagine more people and creatures that don’t seem to be part of our world, yet we know these photos are “real”.  I do like the idea of the book. I’m just not convinced it was as great as people claim it is.

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