- “A haunting and out-of-the-ordinary read, debut author Ransom Riggs' first-person narration is convincing and absorbing, and every detail he draws our eye to is deftly woven into an unforgettable whole. interspersed with photos throughout, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a truly atmospheric novel with plot twists, turns, and surprises that will delight readers of any age.”
- — Amazon Company's Praise for the Book.[src]
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is the first book in hexalogy about the peculiar young Jacob Portman, written by Ransom Riggs. It was released on June 7, 2011 in the United States, later in that same year the graphic version of this novel was released but only in English and a film based on it was made in 2016 under the direction of Tim Burton.[1]
This book is one of the best-selling and translated in the history of Jacob Portman, since according to the official website of Ransom Riggs this book has been translated into more than 40 languages which has been a great achievement for the book and the series in general.[2] Thanks to his excellent work on this novel Riggs was awarded several important awards such as the Goodreads Prize in 2011 in two different categories, something that the author never imagined.
Although Ransom Riggs never saw himself writing a book since he had never done so, at the suggestion of his publisher he decided to write it, since his original idea was to create an album with the vernacular photographs he had.[3] Although Ransom was a beginner in the world of writing, the novel when it was launched into the literary market was a great success and caused great impact among the literary community, which is why it became a New York Times bestseller. It peaked at #1 on the Children's Books chart on April 29, 2011 after being on the chart for 45 weeks, continuing there until May 20 when it dropped to fourth place, but it wasn't until September 9, 2012 that the book was definitively dropped off the chart after a total of 63 weeks of being on it.
Synopsis[]
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. 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 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.
Epigraph[]
| “ | SLEEP IS NOT, DEATH IS NOT; WHO SEEM TO DIE LIVE. HOUSE YOU WERE BORN IN, FRIENDS OF YOUR SPRING-TIME, OLD MAN AND YOUNG MAID, DAY'S TOIL AND ITS GUERDON, THEY ARE ALL VANISHING, FLEEING TO FABLES, CANNOT BE MOORED. |
” |
–Ralph Waldo Emerson | ||
Plot[]
Prologue[]
Jacob Portman begins the story by informing the reader that when he was younger, his grandfather, Abraham Portman, had told him "fairy tales" about an island his grandpa had stayed on. The island was occupied by children with peculiar abilities, and Abraham had the photos to prove it. Unfortunately, Jacob repeated these stories to his elementary school class and was bullied for believing in "fairy tales", so Jacob told his grandpa that his stories were fake, and they never talked about the subject again.
Summary[]
Sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman grew up listening to his grandfather tell him stories of living on an island in a children's home where each child had a supernatural ability of some sort. As he got older, he began to dismiss these as fiction, but still retained his close relationship with his grandfather, who seemed to be getting more senile by the day as he talked of monsters waiting to attack him. One day Grandpa Portman is killed by a mysterious creature in the woods, and Jacob sets out on a mission to uncover the meaning behind his cryptic last words and learn at last about his grandfather's veiled past.
His search takes him and his father to Cairholm, a sparsely populated island in Wales where the children's home that his grandfather grew up in is located. While his father studies the bird species on the island, Jacob hikes through the woods and bog to the house, but finds that it is completely dilapidated and abandoned. The locals tell him stories of the German bombs that wiped the place out and killed all the inhabitants on September 3, 1940, leaving Jacob's grandfather as the only survivor. To Jacob, this does not make sense because he found a letter from Headmistress Alma Peregrine to his grandfather dated only fifteen years before. He wonders if Miss Peregrine had not died after all, or if someone took on her identity in the letter.
Determined to find some final shred of the truth, Jacob goes back to the abandoned house one last time and finds a trunk of old photographs identical to the ones his grandfather used to show him, of children doing strange things like levitating or holding fire. As he looks at the photos, he notices that there are six children watching him, asking if he is Abe, his grandfather's name. He chases them through an old stone cairn into a world that is almost identical to the one that he just left but different in one major way: it is September 3, 1940, and he has somehow traveled back in time.
Two of the children he was chasing capture him — Millard, an invisible boy, and Emma, a girl who can make fire in her hands. They take him back to the children's home, which is no longer abandoned but crawling with children who have all sorts of "peculiarities," or supernatural traits and abilities. They introduce him to Miss Peregrine, the matriarch who watches over the children and runs the house. After deducing that Jacob is indeed Abe's grandson, she explains as much as she can. They are all peculiar humans, or syndrigasti, born with these traits that distinguish them from common folk. She is a special kind of syndrigast called an ymbryne, who can turn into a bird and has the ability to manipulate time. She has set up a time loop for her peculiar children to live in - the day September 3, 1940 repeats indefinitely. The loop resets and begins again just as the German bombs are about to strike the island. Many such time loops exist around the world, all presided over by ymbrynes.
Jacob feels at home in the time loop right away and returns daily, getting back and forth from his own time through the old cairn. He develops a relationship with Emma, but it is complicated by the fact that Emma was his grandfather's sweetheart back before Abe left the loop for good. As time goes on, Miss Peregrine and the children at last tell Jacob the grim truth about their kind: they are constantly hunted by hollowgasts, which are the monstrous remains of peculiar folk who once tried to use time loops to make themselves immortal. Hollowgasts are served by wights, which are hollows that have eaten enough peculiar people to revert back to some semblance of their human form.
One day Miss Avocet, an ymbryne friend of Miss Peregrine, shows up and warns them that the hollows and wights have set out to kidnap ymbrynes, and she herself only just escaped. When Jacob tells Miss Peregrine about a strange new birdwatcher on the island, she worries that a wight may have followed Jacob to the island. She also tells Jacob at last that he himself is peculiar: he is able to see hollows, just like his grandfather, and this in itself is a rare ability because no one else can.
The danger escalates when, in Jacob's own time, they find the town's museum curator murdered, and Miss Peregrine tells Jacob that he must make a choice: stay in the loop with them, or leave and never return, for fear of jeopardizing the peculiar children's safety by leading a wight there. Instead, he sneaks out with Emma and some of the other children to try and stop the hollow before it gets to them. They use one of the children's abilities to raise the curator from the dead and ask what killed him. As soon as this is done, the wight who has been tracking them appears, and reveals that he has been taking on different personas in Jacob's life for years and years to watch him: most recently, his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Golan.
The wight disappears and the children fight his hollow companion. Jacob successfully kills the hollow, but they realize that the wight has gone into the loop and kidnapped Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet in their bird forms. The children pursue the wight and learn that he has plans to restart the immortality experiment, which is why they are kidnapping ymbrynes. Jacob shoots the wight with his own gun, but not before he throws the cage containing the birds into the ocean, which is taken by wights who have commandeered a German U-Boat. The children manage to rescue Miss Peregrine, but Miss Avocet is lost.
Due to the damage the wight did to her, Miss Peregrine is stuck in her bird form and the loop has not reset. The house has been bombed and it has progressed to September 4, 1940 for the first time. Jacob and the other children decide they must go in search of the wights in order to stop the terrible things that would happen to the world due to their immortality experiment. Jacob returns to his own time once more to tell his father that he is leaving, and brings his peculiar friends as proof that everything Grandpa Portman used to tell him was the truth. Then, he and the children sail away from the island, using a map of all existing time loops as their only guide.
Photographs[]
Main article: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Photographs
Settings[]
There are 3 settings in the following order:
- Englewood, Florida in Sarasota County
- Present Cairnholm, Wales
- Past Cairnholm, Wales on September 3 1940
Characters[]
- Jacob Portman - A peculiar boy who can see hollowgast; he is sixteen-years-old, lives in Florida and is the grandson of Abraham Portman .
- Emma Bloom -A peculiar girl who can manipulate fire.
- Horace Somnusson - A peculiar child that has prophetic dreams; he mostly only remembers those that are important.
- Bronwyn Bruntley - A peculiar girl with extraordinary strength.
- Enoch O'Connor - A peculiar boy who can raise the dead and other objects using hearts.
- Olive Abroholos Elephanta - A peculiar girl who can levitate.
- Claire Densmore - A peculiar girl with a sharp-toothed mouth in the back of her head.
- Victor Bruntley - A peculiar boy with extraordinary strength.
- Hugh Apiston - A peculiar boy who can control bees and has bees living inside of him.
- Fiona Frauenfeld - A peculiar girl who can manipulate plants.
- Millard Nullings- A peculiar boy who is invisible.
- Alma LeFay Peregrine - An ymbryne, headmistress of the Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children.
The Graphic Novel[]
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel is the illustrated novel version of Ransom Riggs' original book. It is drawn by famous illustrator Cassandra Jean. The book features a shorter version of the story. It hit shelves November 2, 2013.
The movie adaptation of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children[]
Tim Burton, the director of the movie adaptation of "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"
The movie rights for Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children were sold to 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment. The movie was directed by Tim Burton. Jane Goldman was hired to adapt the story as a screenplay. Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark, and Jenno Topping produced the movie.
Originally intended to be released in June 2015, the movie's release was moved to March 4, 2016 to give way for the movie adaptation of Paper Towns. The film's release date was pushed back again to December 25, 2016 and then shifted up to September 30, 2016.
Behind the Scenes[]
- Ransom Riggs' original idea was not to write a book but to create a photo album to collect all the peculiar images he had, but he decided to change his mind thanks to his editor who insisted that he create a story based on the photographs.
- In almost all the languages in which this book is translated, the covers are the same since they follow the same design line with the same image and with the same colors.
- There are several covers in several languages of this book that radically changed the design of it, some of the most different covers are: the German, the Italian, the two Japanese covers and the Polish cover.
- In English there is another cover that aired with the film, in Spanish there is also another cover for the book equal to the one that was published in English after the film was released, this was done by other publishers in different languages.
- The collector of old photographs who contributed the most photos to this book was the collector Robert Jackson who contributed 24 photographs among which are: the photo of Millard Nullings, the photo of Abraham Portman sleeping, the photo of the masked dancers, among others.
- This book has been for more than two years on the list of best-selling books of the New York Times, at one time it occupied the first place on the list surpassing the first book of the famous Harry Potter franchise.[4]
- It was named as one of the "100 Young Adult Books to Read in a Lifetime" by Amazon.com.[5]
- The book has 48 photographs in total but only 44 are credited to someone the other 4 photographs are not, among those 4 photos are some drawings or letters made digitally.
- The graphic version of the book features a shorter version of the story found in the original book.
Notes and References[]
- ↑ Tim Burton’s new movie Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children takes you to a whole new world
- ↑ Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs' official site
- ↑ Ransom Riggs: The Full Interview
- ↑ Bestsellers: Children's Series in New York Times
- ↑ Amazon's 100 Young Adult Books to Read in a Lifetime in Goodreads