Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Alethea Allarey
Official Links
Author
www.ransomriggs.com
Written by Ransom Riggs
Published by Quirk Books, 2011
2015-2016 Nominee - Young Adult
Synopsis
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs.
It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.
A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.
Excerpt from Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (pages 60-61):
Was this what my grandfather had meant for me to find? Yes, I thought, it has to be--not the letters of Emerson, but a letter, tucked inside Emerson's book. But who was this headmistress, this Peregrine woman? I studied the envelope for a return address but found only a fading postmark that read Cairnholm Is., Cymru, UK.
UK--that was Britain. I knew from studying atlases as a kid that Cymru meant Wales. Cairnholm Is had to be the island Miss Peregrine had mentioned in her letter. Could it be the same island where my grandfather lived as a boy?
Nine months ago he'd told me to “find the bird.” Nine years ago he had sworn that the children's home where he'd lived was protected by one--by “a bird who smoked a pipe.” At age seven I'd taken this statement literally, but the headmistress in the picture was smoking a pipe, and her name was Peregrine, a kind of hawk. What if the bird my grandfather wanted me to find was actually the woman who'd rescued him--the headmistress of the children's home? Maybe she was still on the island, after all these years, old as dirt but sustained by a few of her wards, children who'd grown up but never left.
For the first time, my grandfather's last words began to make a strange kind of sense. He wanted me to go to the island and find this woman, his old headmistress. If anyone knew the secrets of his childhood, it would be her. But the envelope's postmark was fifteen years old. Was it possible she was still alive? I did some quick calculations in my head: If she'd been running a children's home in 1939 and was, say, twenty-five at the time, then she'd be in her late nineties today. So it was possible--there were people older than that in Englewood who still lived by themselves and drove--and even if Miss Peregrine had passed away in the time since she'd sent the letter, there might still be people on Cairnholm who could help me, people who had known Grandpa Portman as a kid. People who knew his secrets.
We, she had written. Those few who remain.
Used with permission of the publisher, Quirk Books