Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Good Writing Makes This Book

Book Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Version: Library ebook borrow

I saw the movie Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children directed by Tim Burton, so I decided I should read the book. Usually, the book is full of greater insights into the tale and has more depth and you get to know the characters better. Not so here.

For well into the first three-quarters of the book the movie and the book track nearly identically. It's the story of the boy who has grown up being told the most fantastic stories by his grandfather, and when his grandfather dies a mysterious and horrific death and tells him he must seek out a teacher from earlier in his life, the boy goes to Wales with his father to seek her out. When he gets there, initially all he finds is an old ruin of a home for peculiar children. But upon further investigation he finds a portal to the past and visits both the teacher and the peculiar children, and in doing so he discovers the answer to the mystery of his grandfather's death and why his grandfather was insistent on his seeking out the teacher. We meet the wonderful teacher and the very interesting children. And we meet the beasts at whose hands the boy's grandfather meets his death, who want to kill the teacher, the peculiar children, and the boy.

It's the last quarter of the book where the story diverges from the movie. There is no gigantic battle scene at a seaside entertainment midway. And there is no emotional reunion with the grandfather at the end. But there is more to the romance with the grandfather's former peculiar love interest, which is this case is the girl who can light fire with her hands and not the girl who can fly. And the book includes all the peculiar photos which inspired the writing of the book in the first place. (Note: In creating an ebook out of an original book file, it isn't always easy to include images and graphics. It was integral to story, so bravo to Riggs for including them!)

I think we can blame the lack of additional depth to this series of stories being in the young adult or teen genre, which tend to be shorter, less complex stories. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, however, is well written, with wonderful descriptions and imaginative passages. It's worth the read just for that. There are sequels to this book. I'm not a fan of horror or peculiar stories, so I haven't decided whether to read them, but if you want to read good writing, I suggest you give this book and the others a try.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: A Whimsical World Beset by Strangeness

Movie Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Version: HBO free preview

Think of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children as a peculiar alternative world to Harry Potter or X-Men. No one is a wizard but everyone has special powers. Even many of the adults. And main character Jabob is one of them, plucked from the world of unpeculiar people by unfortunate events surrounding a visit to his grandfather's former Cornwall village to discover the secrets unfolded to him over the years in tales told to him by his grandfather when Jacob visits the past through a portal. There he meets the characters of those tales he has seen in old photographs and the very proper Miss Peregrine, whose mission has always been to protect them. It turns out these peculiar children have very powerful enemies, and it's up to Jacob to protect them.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is directed by Tim Burton, so as expected you find a selection of strange, almost grotesque personifications of these peculiar children. One otherwise delightful young girl hides a sharp-toothed maw under long red curls at the nape of her neck. Twins wear gunnysacks over their entire bodies with strange eyes, noses, and mouths stitched where faces should appear, and when facing foes lifting the sacks turns the foes into cement. Monsters on the enemy side have no faces, just round alien heads with mouths full of sharp teeth and tall snake-like bodies. The main bad guy, Barron (played by Samuel L. Jackson) has whites for eyes and jagged teeth like a dinosaur. To keep their evil powers, the bad guys pluck out eye balls and eat them -- pretty grim!

The saving grace for the story are the really more innocent personalities of the peculiar children, who are really more childlike than their powers or some of their personifications might suggest. They are, after all, children. And they are protected by the brilliant, almost Holmsian Miss Peregrine. Every evening at exactly the same time she resets time to the same moment before the Home for Peculiar Children is bombed by German Nazi planes, preserving not only their lives but also their youth and their innocence.

Miss Peregrine is portrayed with exceptional exactness by Eva Green, smokes a pipe and breezes through a line of deductive reasoning that rivals Sherlock Holmes. Asa Butterfield plays Jacob, the youth wonder; Butterfield often plays these parts of the awkward youth who steps in to save the day. Terence Stamp is Abe, Jacob's grandfather, who is ably patient with young Jacob's many questions and, despite many of his more villainous roles of the past, makes a pretty good grandfather. Ella Purnell plays Emma, Jacob's love interest and his lifeline between his own world and the world of peculiars. Along with the other children, it's a fine ensemble cast that wins the film for the viewer.

I'm not a Tim Burton fan, but Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was one of his better efforts, in which he managed to create a whimsical world beset by strangeness. Well imagined and well done.