Past and Present Collide in Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

"When I was fifteen, an extraordinary and terrible thing happened, and there was only Before and After." -Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's
Home for Peculiar Children

Literature is filled with characters who must contend with the darker elements of their pasts.  But what if the horrors of a loved one's past literally began to haunt you, appearing not only in your dreams, but in your waking hours?

I just finished one of the best and most uniquely formatted books I've read this year: Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  In the book, sixteen year-old Jacob Portman, an underachiever whose wealthy family seems to both blame and enable his negative behaviors, loses his beloved grandfather in a strange and shocking incident.  Close to his grandfather Abraham since an early age, Jacob had always loved the stories the old man would tell about his childhood, which he spent in a Welsh orphanage, and the strange pictures of the peculiarly gifted children who lived there.  Pictures of a small, skinny boy holding a giant boulder over his head.  Of a girl hovering inches above the ground (the photo that graces the book's cover).  Of a suit that seemed to be worn by a person without a head--an invisible boy, Jacob's grandfather said.  And when asked why he had left Poland and gone to live in the orphanage, Abraham claimed he'd had to flee "the monsters" which Jacob's father later told him were actually the Nazis.

The "invisible boy" from
Abraham's orphanage

Jacob would have taken his grandfather's death hard even if he had not seen what he saw the night Abraham died: a monster, though not the kind his father had described.  And he may have been able to cope if not for the old man's last words, which set Jacob on a journey to discover the true horrors of his grandfather's past--a journey to the mysterious island on which his grandfather had sought refuge and where Jacob would come face to face with the images that had, since his Abraham's death, haunted his nightmares.

The format of Riggs' book is one of the most creative and effective of any book I've ever read.  Throughout the book, Riggs includes bizarre "authentic, vintage found photographs" that have been almost entirely unaltered.  Riggs takes these photographs and weaves them into the heart of the book, building the story around the fictional significance of these peculiar but real pictures.  The hardcover edition prints the photos in color and sepia tones, making them even more real and even more strange, while the paperback prints them in black and white at slightly lesser quality; so, if you purchase the book, I recommend spending the extra to get a hardcover copy (South Elgin High School's library has a least two copies of the hardcover edition to circulate).  Several times, while reading this book at night just before bed, I'd turn the page and my blood would run cold when I'd see an image, say, of a girl standing alone next to a pond, but with the image of two girls reflected on the water's surface.  It was exactly the kind of feeling I'd been hoping for when I chose to focus on horror fiction this year!

Riggs weaves in authentic found photographs that, when
viewed closely, chill the reader's blood.

Besides the unique format, I loved Miss Peregrine's for the voice Riggs was able to create.  At times, teenage narrators can come across as sounding somewhat false or more childish than intended (the result, I'm certain, of adults trying to sound younger than they are).  But Jacob, despite his slacker behavior, sounds intelligent, reflective, and real.  Take, for example, Jacob's description of the home in which his grandfather had grow up:

"My grandfather had described it a hundred times, but in his stories the house was always a bright, happy place--big and rambling, yes, but full of light and laughter.  What stood before me now was no refuge from monsters but a monster itself, staring down from its perch on  the hill with vacant hunger.  Trees burst forth from broken windows and skins of scabrous vine gnawed at the walls like antibodies attacking a viruss--as if nature itself had waged war against it--but the house seemed unkillable, resolutely upright despite the wrongness of its angles and the jagged teeth of sky visible through sections of the collapsed roof" (83).

Wow.

This is one of my most highly recommended reads, especially considering the sequel, Hollow City (how's that for a title?), was just released.  Have you read Miss Peregrine's or anything like it (if something like it even exists)?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Happy reading.