Joseph Portman is a normal teenager in a normal family. Almost. When he was a child, he listened raptly to his father’s tales of a house on a Welsh island where he lived as a child. Joseph assumed he simply meant an orphanage for displaced children. After all, his grandfather had gone to live there in the 1930’s and was a Polish Jew. But there was more to the story.
What Joseph did not believe were his grandfather’s tales of “peculiar children”, children with special powers feared and disowned by society. So when his grandfather died ranting about monsters and Joseph caught sight of a strange-looking creature in the woods, Joseph thought he was losing his mind.
Joseph’s psychiatrist agreed with him, but thought he could get better by visiting the island of his grandfather’s youth. But when Joseph gets there and starts exploring, he realizes that his grandfather’s tales were not imaginary after all.
In Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs weaves a wild tale of discovery and danger in a place no one would ever believe existed unless they had been there themselves. But the most remarkable thing about Riggs’ book is that it was inspired by old photographs that he had found at flea markets or borrowed from collectors. More than forty of these photographs appear in the book. These are all very eerie and depict some very strange children (or in some cases, adults). It’s worth getting the book just to see these photos.
The book is a page-turner, as the reader wants to know what will happen to Joseph and the peculiar children. The photos are startling. Combined they make up a must-buy book.