Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Previously published in Dawn Books & Authors. 

Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children has been a bit of a sleeper hit. It’s a Young Adult story about a sixteen year old searching for meaning – sounds like every other YA story really, but then again, with only a few basic stories in the world, what makes Miss Peregrine’s stand out is how well it is written, how it refuses to be condescending of its readers, and its intelligent and sensitive treatment of its young protagonists.

Jacob grows up hearing stories from his Grandfather Abe about an orphanage where Abe was sent as a war orphan, a place that Abe painted as full of impossibilities yet with remaining physical photographs of the ‘special’ children there as proof of his stories. As Jacob grows older, he begins to lose his belief in his grandfather’s stories and starts to see them as his parents do – a romanticised version of a World War II survivor’s tale. Everyone assumes that Abe is simply building on a childhood feeling of being treated as if he were ‘peculiar’ because he was the only Polish Jew in his family to have survived the Holocaust. Perhaps, thinks Jacob, the entire orphanage was filled with children not ostracized because they had peculiar abilities, but because they were Jewish at a time when their world was violent, confusing and controlled by Nazis.

But when Abe is found brutally killed and Jacob sees something horrific near his grandfather’s body, he knows Abe’s stories weren’t just stories – the strange faded photographs he was shown as a child may just have been authentic and not crudely manipulated as Jacob presumed. Perhaps Miss Peregrine was real; perhaps the fascinating people Abe spoke of all still lived and could help Jacob understand his grandfather better. And so sets off the hero on his journey - Jacob leaves his comfortable lifestyle as a privileged American teenager for a remote island off the coast ofWales. Amongst the rugged cliffs and appropriately creepy fog in the tiny hamlet, Jacob finds mysteries and further mysteries set within time loops and past spaces by some very peculiar people. Riggs’ entire narrative is steeped in dense atmosphere, beautifully supplemented by the vintage photographs he has built the story around. Pictures, including those of a floating child, of a child inside a bottle, a child holding aloft a ball of fire in her palm would be creepy enough had they not been real, but as Riggs himself clarifies, each image is printed exactly as he found it. Each is a ‘found photograph’ – a real, actual printed antique photograph found by Riggs in thrift stores or photo swops. Whether they are of ‘real’ children or modified somehow is a matter of speculation.

Miss Peregrine’s is an adventure story that is at once frightening, whimsical, fun and so strangely sweet. It’s really a classic story – one about a small group of people who have been ostracized and are now being hunted down, a people who have to rise up against their hunters and take control of their destinies. Is it about surviving the Holocaust? Perhaps, but then it is just as much about the mutants of the X-Men comics – many may even write it off as much too heavily influenced by X-Men, but it easily holds its own. At its core, Miss Peregrine’s is a charming, funny and intelligent caper that will easily appeal to a large cross section of readers – many of whom will be pleased to learn that there is indeed a sequel in the works.

Ransom Riggs is a film maker and a writer who is clearly fascinated by images he finds – more than just the photographs used as a basis for Miss Peregrine’s, he also has a book called Talking Pictures out in 2012 which contains photographs he has found and the text that appears on them. Whose pictures these are and what the words meant are questions that Riggs leaves for his readers. Even with Miss Peregrine’s the idea of the images having been ‘found’ and made the basis of the book instead of being created for the book is fascinating – there’s an entire element of mystery that relates simply to the source of the different images, beyond their function in the book. Besides the existence of the images, Miss Peregrine’s remains a very filmic narrative – perfect, in fact for celluloid adaptation. 20^th Century Fox has picked up the film rights in a ‘heated auction’ and rumour already has it that Tim Burton is in talks to direct. For Ransom Riggs and the adventures of Jacob, this seems to be the big time.