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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children [Hardcover]

Ransom Riggs (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (853 customer reviews) |
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Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 2011
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.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, June 2011: As a kid, Jacob formed a special bond with his grandfather over his bizarre tales and photos of levitating girls and invisible boys. Now at 16, he is reeling from the old man's unexpected death. Then Jacob is given a mysterious letter that propels him on a journey to the remote Welsh island where his grandfather grew up. There, he finds the children from the photographs--alive and well--despite the islanders’ assertion that all were killed decades ago. As Jacob begins to unravel more about his grandfather’s childhood, he suspects he is being trailed by a monster only he can see. A haunting and out-of-the-ordinary read, debut author Ransom Rigg’s 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.

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Product Details

  • Reading level: Ages 13 and up
  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Quirk Books; Book Club edition (June 7, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1594744769
  • ISBN-13: 978-1594744761
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (853 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #302 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Ransom Riggs Page
Ransom Riggs
Ransom Riggs grew up in Florida, where he spent his formative years making silly movies with his friends in their various backyards, snorkeling, and complaining about the heat. He studied English at Kenyon College and film at the University of Southern California. He is married. He has a cat. He lives in Los Angeles. He makes films you can watch on his YouTube page: www.youtube.com/ransriggs. He enjoys traveling to exotic lands and complaining about the heat. He would like to thank you for reading this short biography.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
532 of 559 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
To be honest, when I first started reading "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" I expected a haunting thriller, full of horror and danger. That is not what this book is. Instead, this book is fantasy/adventure combined with a very unique style of photography, which made the book better than I ever thought it would be.

Story - Jacob Portman desires an adventurous life, much like the life his grandfather describes to him in various stories. However, when Jacob realizes that he can never have an adventurous life, he just tries to be normal and fit in. He's not popular or extremely smart, and there doesn't seem to be anything unusual about him at all; but when his grandfather dies and leaves Jacob a cryptic message, Jacob is sent on a hunt to find his grandfather's past and ends up traveling all the way to Wales. Once there, Jacob discovers much more than he ever could have imagined about his grandfather and is thrown into the midst of a very peculiar situation.

Writing Style - If I had to compare Ransom Riggs to any other author, I would have to compare him to Lemony Snicket. In fact, this entire book reminded me very much of Mr. Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books. Don't get me wrong, Riggs did not steal Lemony Snicket's writing style at all, but Riggs just simply reminded me of him, which is a positive since I pretty much love anything that Snicket touches.
Something else that I feel Riggs did superbly was explain the detail of everything in the story. Even without the occasional photographs of people and things in the story, I was able to visualize the locations and details because of the fantastic descriptions.
Now, as for the photographs, they added a whole new dimension to the story. They didn't turn the novel into a picture book or something else that we normally associate with children; rather, they added a new level of immersion to the story, with the reader being almost able to see exactly what Jacob is seeing as he looks at the many photographs scattered throughout.
The book is truly addicting, but it isn't perfect; there are a few kinks that I feel needed to be worked out. The major kink being the fact that the attitude of some of the characters just doesn't seem to match the story! The abundance of cursing and crude humor just doesn't make sense with some of the characters or the plot of the story. Also, there were a few things that weren't developed as much as possible and could have been explained more and built upon.

Warnings - Language, Mild Violence, Mild Peril

Overall - In all fairness, my last complaint was very nitpicky and small, and I don't want to give anyone the impression that this is not a good book. For a first novel, it is fantastic! There are a few things to improve on, but I think Mr. Riggs is off to an amazing start! I immensely look forward to his second novel, which I assume is in the works based on the cliffhanger at this end of the story. I would say that, most likely, teens will enjoy the book more than adults, but it really does have a very interesting plot that many will love.
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220 of 228 people found the following review helpful
Eccentric and poignant May 18, 2011
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
When I first heard of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs with its intriguing title, cover, and premise, I was immediately smitten. I love odd books and this one seemed unique in every way. I'm very glad to report that Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was so enthralling that it overcame jet lag from a 10-hour plane ride - I just had to read to the end!

Jacob has always been in awe of his colorful Grandpa Portman, who told him stories about his fabled childhood in a faraway island where he lived in order to hide from monsters. Jacob first believed in his grandfather's extraordinary tales of his friends, strange orphans with magical abilities, especially since his grandfather had photographs as proof of their existence. However, as he grew older, Jacob began to doubt that the stories, the orphans, or the photographs, were real...until his grandfather's cryptic last words and a letter from a mysterious Miss Peregrine spur Jacob to search for his grandfather's childhood home, which turns out to be in a small island off the coast of Wales. What he finds there is completely unexpected.

"The trees parted like a curtain and suddenly there it was, cloaked in fog, looming atop a weed-choked hill. The house. I understood at once why the boys had refused to come.

"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 with vacant hunger. Trees burst forth from broken windows and skins of scabrous vine gnawed at the walls like antibodies attacking a virus--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 collapsed roof.

...

"I gathered up what scrawny courage I had and waded through waist-high weeds to the porch, all broken tile and rotting wood, to peek through a cracked window. All I could make out through the smeared glass were the outlines of furniture, so I knocked on the door and stood back to wait in eerie silence, tracing the shape of Miss Peregrine's letter in my pocket. I'd taken it along in case I needed to prove who I was, but as a minute ticked by, then two, it seemed less and less likely that I would need it."

What happened to the inhabitants of this devastated ruin and how was Grandfather Portman involved? Jacob's investigation turns from creepy to heart-palpitatingly scary, then poignant. Where the story went truly surprised me, not only delivering on its promise of eccentric and dark but inventing a rich and magical other world of "peculiar" children and monsters that's convincingly woven with real history.

The writing is so descriptive and evocative that I now question if the vintage photographs interspersed throughout the narratives are even necessary to the enjoyment of the story. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was apparently inspired by these weird photographs the author found, each with something so off-kilter about them that they can inspire multiple fantastic stories on their own. While I loved the photographs, they were a bonus rather than essential.
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527 of 555 people found the following review helpful
Not good for Kindle June 25, 2011
By Jodi
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
The story is amazing. However, the book is peppered with hand written letters and amazing vintage photographs which are hard to see and impossible to read on the Kindle. Purchasing this book in hard copy is the only way to go.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Nice Idea But The Book Falls A Bit Flat
One of the biggest problems of really wanting a book is you build it up in your head. You see the book in all the stores. Read more
Published 9 hours ago by Alison
Picky Reader
The book started out interesting but by the time I thought this could turn into a good book, it ended. I felt the book was written just so you would buy the second book. Read more
Published 16 hours ago by S. Wilson-Borba
awesome book
Selected this book for my high school students in 10th grade, they have their own book club. They were engaged in the story and had were always eager to discuss what was happening... Read more
Published 22 hours ago by amelia
Meh
Normally I do not review young adult fiction, but after listening to a few folks talk about it, I figured I would read this novel rather than pass it on to Sara. Read more
Published 2 days ago by What the Cat Read
Not good
This book sucked you in, made you interested, spilled the whole story in one chapter then ended. Terrible, Terrible, Terrible
Published 3 days ago by kindle lover
Great story. Can't wait for the sequel!
Saw this book in a store and the cover caught my eye. Read the jacket and I was hooked.

The author's use of the photos to tell a story gives you a nice visual to go with... Read more
Published 3 days ago by Brian J. Rodriguez
F***ing Amazing
I love this book so much that I finished it in TWO DAYS!!!!!
I read a lot so finding a good book has become very hard, but this book is one of my top 25 that I keep on my... Read more
Published 3 days ago by Saphira Moon
Unique and wonderful
The cover of this book caught my attention at the library and I had to read it. I wanted to know the story of the forlorn looking little girl and why she looked so sad. Read more
Published 3 days ago by J. Gebhart
Picture book for young adults!
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Miss Peregrine Book One
By Ransom Riggs

Jacob's grandfather has always told him stories of the orphanage where he... Read more
Published 4 days ago by Reflections of a BookWorm
Interesting, but not Interested
This was a book that I had walked past hundreds of times. I have read the synopsis, and I have read the reviews, and yet I still walked past it when I saw it at bookstores. Read more
Published 4 days ago by S. Shamma
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Introduction (From Wikipedia)

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is the debut novel by American author Ransom Riggs. The book tells the tale of a boy who follows clues that take him to an abandoned orphanage on a Welsh island. The story is told through a combination of narrative and vernacular photographs that the author found at swap meets. This children's book was originally intended to be a picture book featuring photographs Riggs had collected, but on the advice of an editor at Quirk Books, he used the photographs as a guide from which to put together a narrative. Riggs was a collector of photographs, but needed more for his novel. He met Leonard Lightfoot, a well-known collector at the Rose Bowl Flea Market and was introduced to other collectors. The result was a story about a boy who follows clues from his grandfather's old photographs that lead him on an adventure that has him at an abandoned orphange on a Welsh island. The book has been a New York Times best seller.

Attribution: The information appearing above in this tab is from Wikipedia: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Amazon is not affiliated with, and neither endorses, nor is endorsed by Wikipedia or any of the authors who contributed to this article. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: CC BY-SA. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

Plot (From Wikipedia)

Jacob Portman, a 16 year old boy, goes to Wales to find out the truth of his grandfather's past after he was murdered by what Jacob thought was a make-believe creature. When he arrives, he meets Emma, a "strikingly pretty" girl who can control fire. She takes him to meet Miss Peregrine in a time loop set back in the 1940s. Jacob enjoys hanging out with the other peculiar children, such as Millard, who is invisible, and Bronwyn, who has incredible strength. Then Jacob hears some mysterious stories of strange killings in the pub he's staying at, and warns the peculiar children. When they tell Jacob he is the only one who can see the monsters that killed Jacob's grandfather, Jacob knows he is the only hope they have for safety.

Jacob and some of the peculiar children encounter a monster which Jacob kills. Upon return to the Miss Peregrine's home, they find that Miss Peregrine has been kidnapped. The children rescue Miss Peregrine but she is in bird form cannot change back to human form. The peculiar children at the end of the book look for another time loop they can stay in because their current one has been destroyed.

Attribution: The information appearing above in this tab is from Wikipedia: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Amazon is not affiliated with, and neither endorses, nor is endorsed by Wikipedia or any of the authors who contributed to this article. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: CC BY-SA. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

Reception (From Wikipedia)

Riggs' novel spent 45 weeks on the New York Times "Best Sellers" list for children's chapter books and was number one on the list the week of April 29, 2012. According to Deborah Netburn for the LA Times, the best part of the novel is "a series of black-and-white photos sprinkled throughout the book" Publisher's Weekly called the book "an enjoyable, eccentric read distinguished by well-developed characters, a believable Welsh setting, and some very creepy monsters."

Attribution: The information appearing above in this tab is from Wikipedia: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Amazon is not affiliated with, and neither endorses, nor is endorsed by Wikipedia or any of the authors who contributed to this article. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: CC BY-SA. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.
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