Editor's choice: Miss Peregrine鈥檚 Home for Peculiar Children
Sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman may seem like your standard poor little rich kid but really he鈥檚 a 鈥減eculiar.鈥� And the only way for him to find happiness and a like-minded community is to flee his privileged life in Florida and retreat to a wind-swept island in Wales. Now if he can just find a way to deal with the murderous monsters who follow him there.
Jacob鈥檚 parents have lots of money, but he couldn鈥檛 possibly be less happy about his status as the sole heir to Smart-Aid 鈥� his family鈥檚 chain of drugstores that is 鈥渟preading across the state like some untreatable rash.鈥� Bright but lonely and alienated, Jacob loves only his grandfather, Abe. Once he hits adolescence, however, he finds it harder to continue absorbing Abe鈥檚 odd stories about fleeing Europe to escape from monsters. Sure, everyone agrees, Abe deserves lots of sympathy as the only member of his Polish family to survive the Holocaust, but after a while, they decide, enough with the monster stories.
That is, until Abe is mysteriously murdered in the woods near his Florida home. The police swear it was a pack of wild dogs that got him but Jacob is not so sure. Could his grandfather have been telling the truth all along?
That鈥檚 the setup for Miss Peregrine鈥檚 Home for Peculiar Children, one of the more fantastically entertaining young adult books of the summer. Debut novelist Ransom Riggs liberally sprinkles his book with a series of vintage photos around which he has constructed his plot. Depending on your taste, you will find the photos either totally cool or kind of creepy, but either way they feed the book鈥檚 atmospherics and help to convincingly set much of it in a time loop 鈥� an odd chasm in the space-time continuum in which the day Sept. 3, 1940, plays over and over again.
Jacob does eventually make his way to Wales. His parents send him there on the advice of a psychiatrist named Dr. Golan (and yes, that does sound kind of like 鈥淕olum,鈥� doesn鈥檛 it?) to seek out the 鈥渙rphanage鈥� where his grandfather took refuge during the war. The sheer cliffs, ghostly clouds, and abandoned cottages of this lonely island make the perfect backdrop to the sci-fi/fantasy type mystery that Jacob must sort through in order to save himself and the cluster of other 鈥減eculiars鈥� that he unites with there from certain doom.
Kids who like Neil Gaiman and adults who love Susanna Clarke鈥檚 鈥�Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell鈥� will find common meeting ground here in 鈥淢iss Peregrine鈥檚 Home for Peculiar Children,鈥� where a handful of the world鈥檚 neglected and forgotten 鈥減eculiar鈥� folk rise again to tell their stories and attempt to discover a niche for themselves in the world as it is today.
Anyway, it鈥檚 all great fun, and as long as you don鈥檛 get too freaked out by the thought that your middle-school bus driver and/or the gray-suited commuter on the train every day might really be a murderous 鈥渨ight鈥� tracking your every move, you鈥檙e almost guaranteed to enjoy this neat summer offering.
Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor鈥檚 books editor.
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