Changes: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Book)

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This article is about the book written by Ransom Riggs. For other meanings, see Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (disambiguation).

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is the first book in the Peculiar Children series by Ransom Riggs. It is the first book in Ransom Riggs's first Peculiar Children trilogy.

Spoiler warning!
This article contains major plot details! Reader discretion is advised!

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 - A peculiar child that has prophetic dreams; he mostly only remembers those that are important.

Bronwyn - A peculiar girl with extraordinary strength.

Enoch - A peculiar boy who can raise the dead and other objects using hearts.

Olive - A peculiar girl who can levitate.

Claire - A peculiar girl with a sharp-toothed mouth in the back of her head.

Victor - A peculiar boy with extraordinary strength.

Hugh - A peculiar boy who can control bees and has bees living inside of him.

Fiona - A peculiar girl who can manipulate plants.

Millard - A peculiar boy who is invisible.

Alma LeFay Peregrine - An ymbryne, headmistress of the Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children .

Settings

There are 3 settings in the following order:

1. Englewood, Florida in Sarasota County

2. Present Cairnholm, Wales

3. Past Cairnholm, Wales on September 3 1940

Synopsis

It is a story of a boy, Jacob Portman, who, following a horrific family tragedy, follows clues that take him to an abandoned children's home on a Welsh island. The story is told through a combination of narrative and vernacular photographs from the personal archives of collectors listed by the author.

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

Jacob, now fifteen, gets a call at the pharmacy where he works; it's Grandpa Abe, and he's frantically searching for the key to his gun cabinet, yelling that he isn't safe and that "the monsters" have found him. Jacob phones his friend Ricky to drive him to Grandpa Abe's house. When they arrive the pair finds the house in a state of disaster. Jacob runs into the woods out back and finds his Grandpa brutally injured. On the brink of death, Grandpa Abe tells Jacob to "Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man's grave. September third, 1940, Emerson - the letter." He then dies of his injuries. While Jacob holds his grandfather he sees a dark, monstrous figure with black eyes and tentacles flowing from its mouth; it then disappears into the darkness. Jacob then passes out.

As Jacob mourns his grandfather's death, the police conclude that Abe was mauled by wild animals. Jacob tells numerous people, including the authorities, about the creature he saw in the woods, but no one believes him. Jacob suffers from nightmares and is assigned a therapist called Dr. Golan. Dr. Golan diagnoses Jacob with acute stress disorder, much to his anger. Jacob even has a falling-out with his only friend, Ricky. On his sixteenth birthday, his aunt Susan hands him a present she believes is from his Grandpa Abe. The present is the selected works of Ralph Waldo Emerson with a note from his grandfather and a letter addressed to Abe from a woman named Alma LeFay Peregrine. He finds that the letter is from Cymru Wales, Cairnholm.

Jacob pleads with his parents to allow him to travel to Cairnholm in order to discover more about his Grandpa's past. At first, they are very dismissive of the idea, but Dr. Golan insists it will be good for his mental health.

Jacob and his father Frank then travel to the island of Cairnholm for three weeks and stay at the Priest Hole (a small pub and inn). Jacob spends the first few days exploring the island, and he meets the island's museum executive, Martin, who shows him the famous "bog man", an ancient body recovered from the bog. He ventures through the forest and finds the large home where his grandfather used to live during the war, and he discovers from a few locals that the home and its residents were destroyed in a German air raid in 1940. Jacob begins to feel hopeless but is determined to return to the house and look around more in-depth. One morning he awakens to find a peregrine falcon perched on his beside; it then flies away through the open window.

Jacob returns to the house and discovers an old trunk, which he believes is his grandfather's. He opens it by throwing it off the landing and into the basement. In the trunk are photos similar to the ones his Grandpa used to show him as a child. Suddenly, he sees a number of children watching him from a hole in the ceiling. He calls to them, but they flee from the house. Jacob follows a girl into a stone cairn across the bog. He crawls through the narrow tunnel but finds she has disappeared. He leaves the cairn to find the weather miraculously now sunny when it was raining heavily. He walks back to town to find everything old-fashioned and the Priest Hole is no longer a hotel. He is chased away by the pub owners, as they think he is a German spy.

The young girl takes him into a shack where he is surprised by an invisible boy, who introduces himself as Millard and the girl as Emma.

Still convinced that he is living a hallucination, Jacob continues on his way with Emma and Millard. Once they get out of the town and away from the angry bar patrons, Jacob sees the house, but it is pristine and well kept; it looks nothing like the house that he found a few days ago.

Emma and Millard take Jacob to their headmistress, Miss Peregrine, and he is surprised to find that she already knows his name and quite a bit about him. Miss Peregrine explains that the children who live in the house are "peculiar" — born with supernatural abilities. She explains that she too is peculiar and can take the form of a bird— specifically a peregrine falcon. She also tells him that she was indeed the peregrine perching on his beside. Jacob becomes confused, and very quickly Miss Peregrine figures out that Abe hasn't told Jacob very much. Miss Peregrine fills him in on the basics of the peculiar life and the history of how peculiars exist. There are time loops all over the world where other peculiars live as their abilities don't fit into the outside world. Each loop is overseen by a ymbryne, like Miss Peregrine, who can both manipulate time and take the shape of a particular bird. The ymbrynes travel the world searching for peculiar children who need help, then invite them back to their loops where they protect, educate and look after the peculiar children. She tells him what his grandfather was like during his time at the house. Worried about how some of the children would handle the news, she asks Jacob to keep secret the fact that Abe is dead. Unfortunately, Emma was eavesdropping on the whole conversation and is very upset to hear of Abe’s death — mostly because the two of them had been romantically involved.

Miss Peregrine announces that it's dinner time and asks Jacob to join them. At the table, Jacob sees more of the children he’s seen in the pictures. Claire, for instance, the youngest in the house, has a mouth hidden under her angelic locks of hair and takes her meal alone for she is still embarrassed to eat in front of others.

The night ends with the sound of airplanes overhead. As the bombing of the island begins, the children each grab a gas mask and go outside to watch "our beautiful display" of the Nazi air raid. As the bomb is dropped that leaves the house in ruins, Jacob panics and drops to the ground to find that the house is protected by some supernatural force. Miss Peregrine explains that right before the bomb hits she resets the day and that the peculiars forever live in the loop of September 3, 1940. She also explains that peculiars cannot reside in the present as all of their years spent immortalized in the loop would come to them all at once and reduce them to dust. Having had quite an action-packed day, Jacob is ready to head home. Emma offers to escort him back to the cairn, where he takes photos of her on his phone to remember that the day's events were real.

Back in the present, Jacob gets back to the bar, and his dad is concerned about what Jacob is doing here on the island and questions if this trip is helping him. He calls up Dr. Golan and has Jacob speak to him over the phone, but surprisingly, Dr. Golan is still nothing but supportive of what Jacob has been up to.

Jacob spends the next few days befriending the peculiar children: Emma, a girl who can create fire with her hands; Millard, an invisible boy; Bronwyn, a girl with incredible strength; Enoch, a boy who can animate different beings and objects; Olive, a girl lighter than air; Fiona, a girl who can control nature; Hugh, a boy with bees living inside him; Horace, a boy who has dreams and premonitions of the future; and Claire, the youngest, who has an extra mouth on the back of her head. Jacob and Emma begin a romantic relationship.

Emma and Jacob take a boat out to a shipwreck, where Emma explains that Jacobs grandfather was indeed peculiar and that his peculiarity was that he could see the "monsters". They return to the house and find that a ymbryne named Miss Avocet has come to seek the help of Miss Peregrine. Miss Avocet explains that the Wights have captured her peculiar wards and her fellow ymbryne sisters in a surprise attack on their loop. Miss Peregrine tells Jacob that a long time ago fellow peculiars and ymbrynes began experimenting to make themselves into god-like immortals as they believed that they should not be pushed into hiding by the normal beings of the world. However, their experiments went wrong and caused a huge explosion that transformed them into horrible creatures known as hollowgast. If hollowgast consume enough peculiar souls they become wights, human-looking beings with white-clear eyes. Miss Peregrine explains that only peculiars and wights can travel through loops while hollows cannot. To most peculiars hollows are invisible, but Jacob has a rare ability and is able to see them. Wights have been trying to reconstruct their experiments with a purpose unknown to the rest of peculiardom. Miss Peregrine fears that wights have followed Jacob to the island.

Over the next few days, Miss Peregrine puts everyone under curfew, and Jacob informs her of an incident in which a small flock of sheep has been attacked and mutilated. Martin also disappears and is found dead. The peculiar children and Jacob devise a plan so that Enoch can reanimate Martin and ask him who his attacker was as they believe it could be a hollow. Jacob, Emma, Bronwyn, and Enoch sneak out of the loop and into the present to the fishmonger's, where Martin's body is being held. Enoch successfully brings Martin back to life for a short time in which he recites a poem about the bog man; Jacob believes this means Martin was attacked by a hollow. Then a Wight disguised as an ornithologist appears, taunting the children. He knows all of their names and claims to have followed Jacob for a long time. He then transforms into Jacob's eighth-grade bus driver and then finally Dr. Golan. Golan introduces the hollow Malthus (who also killed Grandpa Abe) and then leaves so that Malthus can kill the children and enjoy his meal.

Bronwyn throws an entire ice trough against and then knocks a hole through the wall in which they escape. Emma and Jacob split up from Bronwyn and Enoch so that they can escape to the loop. The hollow chases Emma and Jacob into the ruined home. Jacob takes a set of sheers and attacks the hollow by stabbing it through its eye in the bog. Emma saves Jacob from sinking into the bog and they return to the loop. They return to the house and discover that Golan has abducted Miss Peregrine and forced to transform into a bird and locked the other children in the basement. They free them and they all gather together.

They decide that Golan must still be on the island; Fiona tells them that they're right and that Golan has headed toward the harbor with Miss Peregrine, so they head for the docks. All the children except Bronwyn, Jacob, Emma, and Millard swim towards the lighthouse, where Golan is firing his gun at them. Millard gets shot. Afraid that Millard will die if they retreat to the shore, Bronwyn rips a metal door off a nearby shipwreck and uses it as a shield. They reach the lighthouse, and Emma and Jacob chase Golan up to the lighthouse balcony. Emma and Jacob vibrate the stairs by swaying in the storm, and Golan drops his gun. Jacob and Emma find Golan with Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet trapped in cages in their bird forms with red tracking devices attached. Golan explains that the Wights are kidnapping ymbrynes again to attempt the eternal youth time loop once more. He then flings the cage containing the birds off the balcony and into the sea. Jacob fires the gun into Golan's throat, and he falls over the balcony. The pair search the waves for the cage and see the red tracking device flickering in the dark. Emma and Jacob plunge into the sea and swim towards the cage, but suddenly a German U-boat surfaces beneath them. A Wight emerges from the hatch and takes the cage, sinking back into the depths. Jacob and Emma begin to swim away but then see that Miss Peregrine has somehow escaped the cage and is now floating in the vicious waves. They rescue her and take her back to shore, where the other children are waiting.

The children urge Miss Peregrine to change back into human form, but she is mysteriously unable too. They return to the house to find it no longer standing. The loop has not looped, so the house was bombed by the Germans. Horace then has a prophetic vision of where the Wights have taken Miss Avocet. He draws a snowy landscape with barbed wire fences. The children decide they have no choice but to search for other loops to find Miss Avocet. Emma fetches the Map of the Days, which lists every loop that ever existed. They realize that if they go on the journey Jacob might not ever be able to return to the present. Jacob leaves the loop to go and say goodbye to his dad. His dad tells him he's angry that Jacob keeps disappearing every day. He says that he's meeting imaginary friends but then suddenly Emma, Olive, and Millard appear. At first, Jacob's dad is confused but believes he's dreaming, so he goes back to bed. Emma leaves a note for Frank saying that she'll keep Jacob safe and that she knew Abe. She leaves a photo of herself and Abe lying in a grass field together.

They return to the loop and they bury Bronwyn's brother, Victor, who was killed by a Wight after he ventured outside the loop and whose body was preserved by the loop. The children say their goodbyes to their home and leave for the dock. They gather their belongings as well as food, maps, and pieces of the remaining house. All ten of them pile into rowboats and begin to row out to sea. Noticing large ships in the distance, they row faster, leaving their beloved island behind them.

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's 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.

Film Adaptation

Tim-burton-0 — Tim Burton is directing the Miss P. movie

The movie rights for Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children have been sold to 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment is to be directed by Tim Burton. Jane Goldman has been hired to adapt the story as a screenplay. Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark, and Jenno Topping are producing 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. The Movie is now released. The [1]trailer can be found on youtube.

Photographs

Credited Photographs
The following is a complete list of credited photographs at the back of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar
Title	Page	From the Collection of	Shown	File Name
The Invisible Boy	12	Robert Jackson	Millard Nullings	Invisible.png
The Levitating Girl	13	Yefim Tobis	Olive Abroholos Elephanta
Boy Lifting Boulder	14	Robert Jackson	Victor Bruntley	Victor.jpg
The Painted Head	15	Robert Jackson
Abe Napping	24	Robert Jackson	Abraham Portman	Sleepingwithgun.jpg
The Girl in the Bottle	46	Robert Jackson		Bottle.jpg
The Floating Baby	47	Peter Cohen
The Boy-Faced Dog	48	Robert Jackson
The Contortionist	49	Robert Jackson
The Masked Ballerinas	50	Robert Jackson
Miss Peregrine's Silhouette	56	Robert Jackson	Miss Peregrine	Siillo.jpg
Boy in Bunny Costume	86	Robert Jackson	Franklin Portman
Girls at the Beach	112	The Thanatos Archive		girlsatthebeach.jpg
The Reflecting Pool	113	Peter Cohen
A Boy and His Bees	114	Robert Jackson	Hugh Apiston	Hugh.jpg
The Snacking Ballerinas	115	Robert Jackson
Emma in the Dark	118	Muriel Moutet	Emma Bloom
The Cairn Tunnel	122	Martin Isaac
Fighter Planes	134	Robert Jackson
Miss Peregrine	143	Ransom Riggs	Miss Peregrine
Miss Finch	154	Roselyn Leibowitz	Miss Finch	Finch.jpg
Miss Avocet and Her Wards	155	Julia Lauren	Miss Avocet	Avo.jpg
Miss Finch's Loop	158	Roselyn Leibowitz
Claire's Golden Curls	164	David Bass	Claire Densmore
Our Beautiful Display	169	Robert Jackson		Display.jpg
Bronwyn Bruntley	184	Robert Jackson	Bronwyn Bruntley	Bronwyn.jpg
Girl with Chicken	187	John Van Noate	Fiona Frauenfeld	Fiona.jpg
Jill and the Beanstalk	188	Robert Jackson		Jill.jpg
A Follower of Fashion	191	Robert Jackson	Horace Somnusson	Follower.jpg
Miss Nightjar Takes All the Hard Cases	206	Ransom Riggs	Miss Nightjar	Hard case.jpg
Enoch's Dolls	212	David Bass	Enoch O'Connor	Enoch.jpg
Victor	216	Robert Jackson	Victor Bruntley	SickVick.jpg
My Bombshell	223	Peter Cohen	Abraham Portman
Peeling Spuds	224	Robert Jackson	Emma Bloom	Emspud.jpg
Emma's Silhouette	225	Robert Jackson	Emma Bloom
This Is Why	227	Robert Jackson	Abraham Portman, Aunt Susie	This is why.jpg
A Hunting Trip	250	Ransom Riggs		Huntingtrip.jpg
Department Store Santa	259	Ransom Riggs
Victorian Dentist	260	The Thanatos Archive		Img0621.jpg
Marcie and the Wight	261	Robert Jackson	Marcie	Manshadowchild.jpg
The Vision	271	Peter Cohen	Horace Somnusson
Caw Caw Caw	306	Roselyn Leibowitz		Cawcawcaw.jpg
Abe and Emma	344	Robert Jackson	Abraham Portman, Emma Bloom	Abma.jpg
We Rowed Faster	349	Robert Jackson		Rowfast.jpg

Uncredited Photographs, Drawings, Etcetera
Title	Page	Description	File Name
Police Sketch	37	A sketch of Malthus	Hollodraw.jpg
The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson Title Page	56	With an added note written to Jacob by Abe
Emma's Hatbox	221	Labeled "Private Correspondence of Emma Bloom Do not open"
Kisses, Emma	226	One of the notes written to Abe from Emma	Kiss.jpg
Mr. Barron	291	A stapled photograph of Mr. Barron
Horace's Drawing	334	Depicts a forest and razor wire
Emma's Letter	345	A letter written to Franklin from Emma

@@ Line 33: / Line 33: @@
 <blockquote>''This article is about the book written by Ransom Riggs. For other meanings, see [[Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (disambiguation)]].''</blockquote>
-{{Spoiler}}
 '''Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children''' is the first book in the [[Peculiar Children series]] by [[Ransom Riggs]]. It is the first book in Ransom Riggs's first Peculiar Children trilogy.
+{{Spoiler}}
 ==Characters==