Ransom Riggs’ debut novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, is a well-written tale of threads woven together to create a wonderful mysterious tapestry for teens. Grandpa Portman told wondrous tales of peculiar children in the orphanage where his he lived as a child, but as his grandson, Jacob discarded the stories as pure fiction. Just shy of his sixteenth birthday, Jacob discovers his grandfather dying, a victim of a brutal murder, but no one believes Jacob when he speaks of a monster at the scene. A secret letter discovered months later leads Jacob to visit the island of his grandfather’s stories in search of the truth of Abe Portman’s identity and who that makes Jacob. As Jacob begins to make wondrous discoveries on Cairnholm Island, questions abound: Who was Abe Portman? Who, or what, killed him? Who was Miss Peregrine? What happened to the children in the old orphanage on the island when the bombs bombarded the island in 1940? Who, or what, is killing on the island today? The story is interspersed with pictures of the peculiar children and Riggs faithfully creates a background for each peculiar child to create a wonderful cast of characters.
