#34--Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

I am a part of the book club at my school, but am rarely able to attend the meetings, which means that I often don't read the books until months later.  Such is the case with Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which was one of our books last year, but I only just read it yesterday.  The thing that intrigued me the most was the creepy pictures in this book, like the cover below where the girl is levitating off the ground by a few inches.

The author has incorporated quite a few of these pictures throughout the story with explanations for them....

Growing up, Jacob Portman's grandfather (Abe) told him fantastical stories about growing up on a magical island off the coast of Wales where all the other children had magical abilities.  A brother and sister were the strongest people Abe knew and could lift large boulders with very little effort.  Another boy was invisible, and liked to sneak up on people while not wearing clothes---if he had clothing on, his shape could be seen. And yet another girl who floated away if not tethered to the earth.  All these stories seemed like fairy tales to Jacob, until he stopped believing in them.  Right before Jacob's 16th birthday, his grandfather has started to let paranoia take over his thinking, claiming the monsters are back and out to get him.  One day the paranoia has reached a boiling point and Jacob goes to Abe's house to try to calm him down.  Instead, Jacob finds his grandfather in the woods, almost dead, in what appears to have been a wild animal attack.  In his last words, Abe tells Jacob, "Find the bird.  In the loop.  On the other side of the old man's grave.  September 3, 1940.  Emerson--the letter.  Tell them what happened."  In the minutes after his grandfather's last words, Jacob shines his flashlight into the woods and sees "a face that seemed to have been transplanted directly from the nightmares of my childhood.  It stared back with eyes that swam in dark liquid, furrowed trenches of carbon-black flesh loose on its hunched frame, its mouth hinges open grotesquely so that a mass of long eel-like tongues could wriggle out."  No one else saw this creature. 

Abe's final words, and the hideous creature, begin to haunt Jacob's dreams, until he finally (with the help of his shrink) convinces his parents to let him go to Wales to try to find out about his grandfather's past, hoping that if he is able to find anything, that he will be able to finally understand and get a peaceful night's sleep.

What he doesn't expect to find is the house that his grandfather lived in when he was in Wales was bombed out on September 3, 1940, and all the inhabitants were believed to be dead.  Yet, Abe received a letter from his former headmistress there, Miss Peregrine, only 15 years prior.  There was definitely something else going on, and Jacob is determined to find out what. 

Along the way, Jacob does some time traveling, meets the children of his grandfather's stories, battles horrible monsters, and finds out a thing or two about himself as well.

This story was so much more than just the pictures that drew me to it and I found myself unable to put it down.  There is reportedly a sequel due to come out in June of 2013.  I look forward to finding out how Jacob and the children fare in their new world!

Happy Reading!!