Ransom Riggs: "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel"

Title:  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel   
Story:  Ransom Riggs
Art:  Cassandra Jean
Lettering: JuYoun Lee and Stephanie Lee
Plot Type:  Light Urban Fantasy UF     
Ratings:  Violence—3; Sensuality—2; Humor—3 

Publisher:  Hachette (2/2014)  

     This graphic novel is based on the print novel by Ransom Riggs. Click HERE to read my review of the print novel, which includes an overview of the world-building and a summary of the plot. This post will focus on a comparison of the print book and the graphic novel and on an analysis of the artwork.  

            WORLD-BUILDING AND PLOT SUMMARY:            

Close-up of Jacob
and Miss Peregrine
from the cover

     Just a brief summary: The lead character is young Jacob Portman, who has spent his childhood among in a suburban American home. Jacob's grandfather has always told him fantastical stories about the peculiar children he left behind in an orphanage on a tiny island off the coast of Wales when he came to America after World War II. As Jacob grows older, he realizes that the stories are fairy tales, even though Grandpa has a stack of strange photographs of children doing weirdly magical things (for example, lifting impossibly heavy objects, floating in the air, being covered with bees, being invisible). 

     When Grandpa is brutally murdered, Jacob finds his body and sees a monster in the near-by bushes. When he tries to tell his parents and the authorities what he saw, they send him to a psychiatrist. But Jacob is determined to carry out his grandfather's last wishes: "Find the bird. In the loop on the other side of the old man's grave."—even though he has no idea what that means. The story follows Jacob on his journey as he fulfills his grandfather's wish and finds himself in the middle of a magical place he never dreamed could truly exist. He meets some new friends, finds out that he is just as peculiar as they are, and makes a decision that changes his life. 

     If you are enchanted with Riggs' peculiar world, click HERE to go to the Peculiar Children Wiki for a wealth of information about this strange mythology. Click HERE to read my review of the second peculiar novel, Hollow City.   

            THE GRAPHIC NOVEL                

THE STORY: The story line sticks to the main plot of the print book, meaning that several minor characters and events are either omitted or diminished. The major difference is the lack of details about the children. The graphic novel is almost completely plot driven, whereas the print novel has a big dose of character development, introducing each of the peculiar children and allowing the reader to understand the eccentricities of their personalities. Of course, that's what happens in all graphic novels, because if you included every detail, the book would be the size of an unabridged dictionary. 

     If you want to get to know the personalities and peculiarities of the children, I recommend that you read the print novel (if possible, before reading the graphic novel). If you've already read the print novel, the graphic novel is a nice warm-up for book 2, Hollow City.

Jacob (top and 2nd from right) meets
some of the peculiar children for the 
first time: Olive, Hugh, & Enoch

THE ARTWORK: I enjoyed this book tremendously; first, because it's a great story, and second, because the artwork enhances that story so effectively. Cassandra Jean also did the artwork for the Beautiful Creatures graphic novel, among others.

     The illustrations show some manga influence, with many characters (particularly the villains) having typically almond-shaped faces, although most have more realistic eyes and normal hair colors. In another nod to manga, the artist effectively uses sets of three horizontal lines on Jacob's upper cheeks to emphasize that Jacob is in a state of shock, fear, and/or disbelief throughout much of the story. 

     The drawing style has a sketched-in feel, but each character has his or her unique and distinguishable features (even though the text does not include many details about their personalities). All in all, the drawings are a near perfect match with my own mental images. 

     The clothing mimics that which each character wears in the black and white photographs from the print novel—all of which are included in the graphic novel. In the print novel, those photographs stand in sharp contrast from the text, but in the graphic novel, they recede into the background because the illustrated characters pop off the page with such bold colors and dramatic style. I read the print novel more than a year ago, so I had already seen the photographs. For that reason I tended to disregard them in the graphic novel because the bold artwork was much more compelling.

The German aircraft bombing
that climaxes each day in the loop

     Cassandra Jean's use of color is quite interesting and effective. For the most part (except for the very first scene), all scenes that take place in the real world of the 21st century are drawn in black and gray. In contrast, the scenes in which Jacob is inside the loop with the peculiar children are drawn in colors that vary in tone and hue depending on the emotional content of the scene. At left is one of the most colorful: the daily bombing that screams of danger. 

     Scenes of heavy emotion are immediately recognizable because they are colored in shades of dark blue. Intense dialogues (like the scene in which Miss Peregrine and Jacob first discuss his grandfather) are colored in somber blues and greens, lighter than those in the more overtly emotional scenes. The intense scene in which Jacob first meets Emma is colored in emotional purples with stark gold accents. Oranges and browns designate danger (for example, when Jacob has a stand-off with the villain in the story's big showdown scene at the and when Jacob and Emma share their first dangerous kiss). 

     A huge difference between the print novel and the graphic novel is that in the graphic novel we see exactly what the monsters look like. While the print novel provides photographs of all of the peculiar children, it forces our imaginations to create images of the monsters based on the author's descriptions. I have to admit that when I turned the page and saw the first graphic depiction of one of the monsters, my heart gave a little jump—he/it is quite scary, in a Cthulhu kind of way.     

An early page showing 
how the letterer fills 
in large blocks of
world-building

THE LETTERING: The letterers use two alternating placement styles for the text: within round or oval dialogue bubbles and in text-line sentences set horizontally between drawings. When world-building context is needed, the letterers print several paragraphs of world-building alongside one or more related illustrations (see the example at right). These big chunks of exposition do slow down the pace a bit, but there's no way to tell this story without an explanation of Riggs' mythology.   

LINKS TO MORE INFORMATION: Click HERE to read an excerpt from this graphic novel on its amazon.com page. Just click on the cover art at top left. Several illustrations from the yet-to-be-published Hollow City graphic novel are included at the end of the Miss Peregrine... graphic novel.  

     Click HERE to view Riggs' excellent trailer for the print book on YouTube. Click HERE to watch a fascinating YouTube video Riggs took while he was putting together the print book trailer. It is entitled A Most Peculiar Trip: Searching for Miss Peregrine. The movie rights have been sold to 20th Century Fox, and Tim Burton is slated to direct (projected release date—7/31/15).

Ransom Riggs: "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"

Author: Ransom Riggs
Title: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Plot Type: Fantasy with a touch of horror
Ratings: Violence—3; Sensuality—2; Humor—3
Publisher: Quirk Books (6/2011) (Currently available in hardback, paperback, e-book, and audiobook CD)

     Riggs seems to have channeled both David Lynch and Stephen King as he put together this eerie time travel novel, which has become a New York Times best seller. The book itself is lovely, with thick, smooth pages, great cover art, and wonderfully creepy vintage photographs interspersed to coincide with points in the story.

     Here's the plot set-up: All his life, Jacob Portman, now 16, has listened to stories told by his grandfather (Abraham Portman) about his life in a remote Welsh orphanage during the early days of World War II. Abraham had been sent to the isolated island orphanage by his Polish parents when the Germans began their persecution of the Jewish population of Europe in the late 1930s. The stories that Abraham tells about Miss Peregrine's Home are strange and rhapsodic: "...the sun shined every day and nobody ever got sick or died. Everyone lived together in a big house that was protected by a wise old bird." (p. 9) Abraham also tells fantastic stories about his fellow orphans, bolstered by a box full of bizarre old photographs. In those pictures, Jacob sees images of what appear to be an invisible person, a girl floating in the air (see the cover art), and a person with two faces, among others. Abraham's happy stories, though, are always followed by stories about horrible monsters "who "stank like putrefying trash" and who had "packs of squirming tentacles...inside their mouths." (p. 9) As a young boy, Jacob believed Abraham's tales were real, but as he grew older, he began to see the stories as total fiction—as bizarre fairy tales.  

      Early in chapter 1, Abraham is savagely murdered by an unknown assailant—unknown to everyone, that is, but Jacob. When Jacob finds his grandfather's body in the woods, he also sees a monster peering out from the trees—the monster from Abraham's stories. As Abraham dies, he urgently whispers a few cryptic phrases to Jacob. From that point on, Jacob's life changes completely. No one believes his monster story, but he can't give it up and he has constant nightmares about that monster. This results in unending visits to a psychiatrist, ridicule from his peers, and disbelief and pity from his parents. 

     Eventually, Jacob talks his parents into allowing him to visit Cairnholm Island in Wales, so that he can visit the location of his grandfather's orphanage. He convinces them that if he visits the actual location of Abraham's tall tales, he will be able to come to terms with his grandfather's death once and for all. Jacob expects to find the orphanage still intact, but he discovers that the house is wrecked and abandoned and the occupants are long gone. Here is Jacob's ominous first view of the orphanage: "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 on the hill 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....Then I came around back and saw...a doorless doorway, bearded with vines, gaping and black; an open mouth just waiting to swallow me. Just looking at it made my skin crawl, but I hadn't come halfway around the world just to run away screaming at the sight of a scary house....I mounted the crumbling steps and crossed the threshold." (pp. 79-80) According to the locals, the island was bombed and the house destroyed by the Nazis. Jacob is shocked to learn that September 3, 1940, is an important date in the town's history because that is one of the phrases that his grandfather whispered as he died.

     Up to this point, the story has been set in a normal-world context (except for the monster, of course), but now things get mysterious and goose-bumpy. As Jacob makes repeated visits to the ruin of the old house, he finds himself in a world in which the word "peculiar" actually means "magical"—a world in which some of those "peculiar" children from his grandfather's stories might still actually be alive—and the monsters may be after them, too!

     This is a spine-tingling, spooky fantasy that the author illustrates with vintage photographs he has collected over the years and then slipped into the story line. Libraries are split 50/50 on where they are shelving this book, with half going with YA and half placing it on the adult fiction shelves. Despite the fact that the hero is a teenager, the story is very adult in its focus, with its blending of World War II and Holocaust history, monster tales, magical time travel, and family relationships. 

     Although the plot wears thin at times, the overall effect is substantially shuddersome. The book fits many descriptions: a coming-of-age novel, a time travel story, a monster-in-the-dark tale, and a paranormal fantasy. Whatever the description, it's a great read that will keep you engrossed all the way through. Riggs plans a sequel in the near future, and a movie is in the works.     

     Riggs does a great job of setting up scenes with powerfully descriptive foreshadowing. The following paragraph put me in mind of the dramatic opening scene in David Lynch's classic film, Blue Velvet, where we watch a beautiful morning unfold in a white-picket-fence suburban neighborhood, with birds singing and flowers blooming—but then things begin to go terribly wrong (Click HERE to go to a YouTube video of that scene.) Both the print and film scenes ratchet up the suspense when they drop a macabre note into a picture-perfect, Mother-Nature moment: "It was an almost-too-perfect morning. Leaving the pub felt like stepping into one of those heavily retouched photos that come loaded as wallpaper on new computers: streets of artfully decrepit cottages stretched into the distance, giving way to green fields sewn together by meandering rock walls, the whole scene topped by scudding white clouds. But beyond all that, above the houses and fields and sheep doddering around like little puffs of cotton candy, I could see tongues of dense fog licking over the ridge in the distance, where this world ended and the next one began, cold, damp, and sunless." (p. 101)

     Click HERE to go to an article about the German bombing of Wales during World War II. Click HERE to go to an article explaining the Kindertransport, a program that facilitated the transport of European, mostly Jewish, children to safety in Great Britain just prior to the outbreak of World War II. Click HERE to go to a history of the Holocaust in Poland. Click HERE to go to a history of the Jews in Poland.

     Click HERE to to go to a Quirk Books web page that contains links to PDF downloads of the first three chapters of the book. Click HERE to view Riggs' excellent book trailer on YouTube. Click HERE to watch a fascinating YouTube video Riggs took while he was putting together the book trailer. It is entitled A Most Peculiar Trip: Searching for Miss Peregrine. Click HERE to read a fascinating NY Times interview in which Riggs explains how a collection of vintage snapshots morphed into his first novel. 

The movie rights have been sold to 20th Century Fox, and Tim Burton is slated to direct (projected release date—7/31/15).

Below are thee of the vintage photographs Riggs has woven into the story. Click HERE to view a pdf file with full-page shots of all of the photographs in this book.

UPDATE! "Hollow City": Ransom Riggs' Sequel to "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"

Author:  Ransom Riggs
Title:  Hollow City
Series: PECULIAR CHILDREN 
Plot Type:  Fantasy with a touch of horror
Ratings:  Violence—4; Sensuality—2; Humor—3
Publisher:  Quirk Books (1/2014) (available in hardback, CD, MP3, and e-book formats)

PUBLISHER'S BLURB:

     September 3, 1940. Ten peculiar children flee an army of deadly monsters. And only one person can help them—but she’s trapped in the body of a bird. The extraordinary journey that began in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. 

     There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom. Like its predecessor, this second novel in the PECULIAR CHILDREN series blends thrilling fantasy with vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

MY REVIEW:
     Click HERE to read my overview of the world-building and my review of the first book, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Click HERE to go to the Peculiar Children Wiki, which contains in-depth information about the setting and the characters. I don't recommend reading Hollow City as a stand-alone because it doesn't contain very much basic information about the series mythology. Also, you need to read the first book in order to understand how and why the peculiar children appear—in the opening scene—in two rowboats off the coast of Wales in the midst of World War II.

     As Hollow City opens, the year is 1941 and ten peculiar children have escaped from the destruction of their long-time home on Cairnholm Island. They are rowing as fast as they can towards mainland Wales, pursued by a submarine full of wights and hollowgasts (aka hollows). Also along for the ride is Alma LeFay Peregrine, who is stuck in her bird form. Miss Peregrine is an ymbryne—a shape-shifting manipulator of time and headmistress of Cairnholm's magical time loop. 

Here is a list of the children and their peculiar abilities:

> Jacob Portman: the hero and narrator; he can see and sense hollows

> Emma Bloom: Jacob's girlfriend; she can make fire with her hands

> Bronwyn Bruntley: a large girl who is extremely strong

> Millard Nullings: an invisible boy who is a scholar of all things peculiar

> Olive Abroholos Elephanta: a girl who can float in the air

> Horace Somnusson: a boy who has visions and dreams of the past and the future

> Enoch O'Connor: a pessimistic boy who can temporarily animate the dead

> Hugh Apiston: a boy who commands and protects great numbers of bees that live in his stomach

> Claire Densmore: the youngest girl; she has an extra mouth in the back of her head

> Fiona Frauenfeld: a mute girl who can make plants grow

     The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 follows the children as they complete their ocean journey, discover and enter a time loop populated by talking animals, and get help from a group of gypsies. Part 2 takes place in London (which is in the midst of Hitler's bombing Blitz), as the children search for Miss Wren, an ymbryne who (they hope) will help Miss Peregrine regain her human form. Throughout their journey, the children are constantly pursued by wights and hollows. Book 1 contains an extensive mythology for the wights and hollows, so I won't go into much detail here. For the purposes of this review, I'll just say that they are the villains and that they plan to capture the children and the ymbrynes for unspeakable purposes.

     As the children make their way to London, their peculiar skills come in handy several times. Jacob can always sense the presence of hollows, so he always gives the group plenty of warning. Emma saves them several times with her fiery talent, and Hugh twice comes to the rescue with his bees. Millard is also helpful because he is very familiar with an ancient book entitled Tales of the Peculiar, which contains stories that are relevant to their search for Miss Wren. Bronwyn's strength frequently comes in handy because she transports their heavy trunk on her back and she carries Claire, who tires quite easily. As for Claire and Fiona, their talents are never used in this book. The same goes for Enoch, who uses his necromancy skills only once, with unfortunate results fro the group. This treatment of the latter three characters is a definite weakness: Riggs makes Claire a burdensome child, Fiona a non-character, and Enoch a bullying complainer.

     The reason for this misuse of characters, I believe, is that in this book Riggs' story-telling is led by the weird photographs, whereas the plot of the first book is enhanced by the photos. Rather than supporting the narrative, many photographs (and their accompanying mini-story lines) actually detract from the main plot. This is particularly true of the bizarre animal photographs in chapters 3 and 4, where Riggs appears to have manipulated the story line solely for the purpose of including some particularly weird animal photographs. In chapter 8, Riggs includes a number of vintage photographs purportedly showing scenes of the London Blitz. These particular images are mentioned very briefly in passing, but have nothing to do with the story line. Even the photograph on the book's cover has only a tenuous connection to the plot. The hole-in-the-stomach girl is in just one scene before she and her sister turn their backs on the peculiar group. This awkward and manipulative use of photographs is one reason why Hollow City doesn't have either the coherence or the strange magical resonance of the first book.

     Another problem is that the peculiar children have suddenly turned into superheroes who go for three days and nights with hardly any sleep and with very little food, yet are able to out-fight and out-think their enemies with no serious injuries and without losing any members from their original group. In the first book, the peculiars suffered at the hands of the wights and hallows, but in this book the children are almost Scooby-Doo-ish as they lurch from one dangerous situation to the next, always winning the day in some unexpected and frequently outlandish manner. Each confrontation with their enemies plays out like a Roadrunner vs. Wile E. Coyote parody. After awhile, you come to realize that, like the Roadrunner, the children will easily beat their enemies into complete submission—time after time.

     Even though the first book is the stronger of the two, Hollow City is still an above-average read. Riggs is an eloquent writer with the ability to fully develop his characters (particularly Jacob) through their actions, dialogue, and relationships. Jacob is a terrific narrator, internally facing down his doubts and fears while maintaining a calm facade as he plunges ahead into this dark, often hopeless, world to which he has pledged his loyalty and support. Although he dreams of his real home and family, he also has strong emotional ties to his peculiar family—particularly to Emma. Here, Jacob sums up the situation as the children search for Miss Wren in London: "So it had come to this: everything depended on a pigeon. Whether we would end the night in the womblike safety of an ymbryne's care or half chewed in the churning black of a hollow's guts; whether Miss Peregrine would be saved or we'd wander lost through this hellscape until her clock ran out; whether I would live to see my home or my parents again—it all depended on one scrawny, peculiar penguin." 

     One of the most clever plot elements is the choice of location for the London time loop. I won't go into detail, except to point out that the children are searching for Miss Wren, and that there was a certain man with the same surname who had a major influence on London architecture. 

     The plot twist at the end is completely unexpected, and it adds a cliff-hanger ending to this second episode in the series. If you're looking for a stand-alone, this isn't the book for you. You need to read the first book for background on the world-building, and you'll need to read the third book for closure. (As I understand it, Riggs plans for this series to be a trilogy.)

UPDATE! Ransom Riggs: Final Novel in PECULIAR CHILDREN SERIES: "Library of Souls"

Author:  Ransom Riggs
Series:  PECULIAR CHILDREN SERIES
Novel: Library of Souls (hard cover, e-book, and audio—9/2015; paperback—4/2017)
Plot Type:  Fantasy with a touch of horror
Ratings:  Violence—3; Sensuality—2; Humor—2

Publisher and Titles:  Quirk Books 

                         INTRODUCTION                          

     Library of Souls is the third and FINAL novel in the PECULIAR CHILDREN series. I have reviewed the first two novels in separate posts. Here are the links to those posts:

> Click HERE to go to my review of the first book, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. This review contains a full description of the world-building.

> Click HERE to go to my review of Hollow City, the second book. 

> Click HERE to read my review of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel.

Riggs includes the following definitions at the beginning of Library of Souls, and I am including them here just for review:

Peculiars: "The hidden branch of any species, human or animal, that is blessed—and cursed—with supernormal traits. Respected in ancient times, feared and persecuted more recently, peculiars are outcasts who live in the shadows." In this novel, the primary peculiars are Jacob and Emma, the human hero and heroine, and Addison, the well-spoken, eyeglass-wearing dog.

Loop: "A limited area in which a single day is repeated endlessly. Created and maintained by ymbrynes to shelter their peculiar wards from danger, loops delay indefinitely the aging of their inhabitants. But loop dwellers are by no means immortal: each day they 'skip' is a debt that's banked away, to be repaid in gruesome rapid aging should they linger too long outside their loop."

Ymbrynes: "The shape-shifting matriarchs of peculiardom. They can change into birds at will, manipulate time, and are charged with the protection of peculiar children."

Hollowgast (aka Hollows): "Monstrous ex-peculiars who hunger for the souls of their former brethren. Corpselike and withered except for their muscular jaws, within which they harbor powerful, tentacle-like tongues. Especially dangerous because they're invisible to all by a few peculiars, of whom Jacob Portman is the only one known alive."

Wights: "A hollowgast that consumes enough peculiar souls becomes a wight, which are visible to all and resemble normals in every way but one: their pupil-less, perfectly white eyes. Brilliant, manipulative, and skilled at blending in, wights have spent years infiltrating both normal and peculiar society...They've waged a long campaign of murder, fear, and kidnapping against peculiars, using hollowgast as their monstrous assassins. Their ultimate goal is to exact revenge upon, and take control of, peculiardom."

                    PUBLISHER'S BLURB                     
     A boy with extraordinary powers. An army of deadly monsters. An epic battle for the future of peculiardom.

     The adventure that began with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and continued in Hollow City comes to a thrilling conclusion with Library of Souls. As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discovers a powerful new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companions from a heavily guarded fortress. Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children.

     They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all. Like its predecessors, Library of Souls blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

                    MY REVIEW                      

Caul

    The action starts early and continues at a break-neck pace all the way to the end of this final novel. Jacob, Emma, and Addison are on a quest to find and rescue their peculiar friends and their ymbryne, Miss Peregrine, from the clutches of Caul, Miss Peregrine's villainous brother. Currently, the intrepid trio is in the present—not in a loop—so if they are injured or killed, there will be no replay. This is for keeps.

     As the story begins, Jacob has just discovered that, under certain circumstances, he can control hollows with just his voice—for example, when he is completely terrified because one of them is trying to kill him. When Jacob and his friends are trapped in a tunnel with a hungry hollow, Jacob suddenly discovers that the creature responds to his orders. When he says "Don't move." "Get back" "Stay." the hollow obeys, and then begins to follow Jacob—not attacking, just following along behind the little group like a very dangerous pet. As time passes, Jacob fine-tunes his interactions with his hollow and becomes more confidant in his new supernormal power.

     Meanwhile Addison is tracking the scent of their peculiar friends, who are in the clutches of Caul and his army of wights and hollows. The trail comes to an end on a riverbank, where they climb into a boat owned by a man named Sharon (an obvious play on the myth of Charon, the ferryman who carries the dead across the River Styx from the world of the living to the world of the dead). Sharon is "seven feet tall at least, his massive frame draped in a cloak and his face hidden beneath a dark hood." The river-ride-to-hell metaphor becomes even more obvious when their voyage takes them directly to a peculiar part of London called Devil's Acre, because Sharon all but admits that he transported Jacob's peculiar friends there. 

     As they travel into Devil's Acre, Jacob's hollow is still following him—underwater. When some river pirates attack Sharon's boat, Jacob commands the hollow to stop them and is happily surprised that the hollow does exactly that. Soon after they arrive in Devil's Acre, Addison hitches a ride to the island on which Caul has established a fortress where he holds all of his captive peculiars and ymbrynes. Sharon promises to assist Jacob and Emma, but when he leaves them alone to run an errand, they decide to strike out on their own and learn quickly that Devil's Acre is a very dangerous place. Eventually, Sharon and his friends come to their rescue and carry them off to meet Miss Peregrine's second brother, Myron Bentham.

     At this point, Riggs has Bentham fill in the gaps in the mythology, going back to the beginning—to pre-hollow/wight—days and telling the tragic story of who created those monsters and why. But can we trust Bentham? Jacob and Emma aren't sure (and neither was I). 

     For me, the explanation of the mythology is the most interesting part of the story, mostly because it isn't driven by weird photographs. I know...I know...The photographs are the most famous element of this series, but at this point I feel that rather than planning a general plot and then using photos that enhance it, Riggs is letting the photos themselves "write" too many of the story lines. Several incidents seem to have been jammed into this already lengthy book just because Riggs couldn't resist adding a few more really strange pictures. 

     Needless to say, Jacob and Emma are so intelligent, fearless, and battle-ready that they win the day in the requisite showdown battle with Caul near the end of the book. But then, Jacob has a decision to make. Should he go back to his normal family, or should he stay with his first-and-only-love, Emma, and his peculiar friends. Riggs finds a satisfying way to resolve Jacob's problem even if it is a bit too quick and neat.

     All in all, this has been a great series, very fresh and inventive. The best of the three books is the first one, mostly because it introduces Jacob and the peculiar children and sets up the mythology so perfectly. The second book is not as successful because it feels totally driven by the photographs, although the wild and crazy scenes at sea are quite exciting. This final book is better than the second but doesn't quite measure up to the first, with the exception of the explanation of the early parts of the mythology, which are well crafted and fit right in with the events of the earlier books. 

     Tim Burton's movie based on the series is in theaters now and has received mostly good reviews. I haven't had time to see it yet, but plan to do so soon. I recommend the series because it is so imaginative and because Riggs has done such a masterful job with characterization. We really care about Emma and Jacob and their friends as they try to live their peculiar lives in as normal a way as possible.

     Click HERE to read or listen to an excerpt from Library of Souls on its Amazon.com page. Just click on the cover art for print or on the "Listen" icon for audio. 

Tim Burton and Ransom Riggs: "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"

In preparation for the new Tim Burton movie, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (opening 9/30/16), you might wish to read my reviews of Ransom Riggs' original novel, the sequel, and the graphic novel. 

Click HERE to read a review of the movie that was published in Variety on September 25, 2016. Click HERE to go to the movie's web page where you can scroll down a bit to view four different video trailers.

Here are the links to my reviews of the first two books and the graphic novel. I am currently in the process of reading the third book in the series and will post a review ASAP.

Click HERE to go to my review of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Click HERE to go to my review of Hollow City, the sequel to the original book.

Click HERE to read my review of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel. 

If Riggs' novels appeal to you, you might also enjoy these books, both of which contain elements that reminded me of the Miss Peregrine stories:

Click HERE to read my review of Harrison Squared, by Daryl Gregory.

Click HERE to read my review of The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac, by Sharma Shields.