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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1)

Ransom Riggs

Start date: March 13, 2012

Finish date: March 31, 2012

Discussion: Books of the Month

Why we're reading this: We voted and this one won for being one of the March Books of the Month. Here is the link: http://www.goo …more
[close] We voted and this one won for being one of the March Books of the Month. Here is the link: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...

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What Members Thought

Aug 01, 2014 Maria V. Snyder rated it it was amazing

What a creative and fun book to read! This is another one of my daughter's recommendations and she is 3 for 4! The story is basically about a group of peculiar children who can do extraordinary things, but they're hiding from the world at large and from other things as well(I won't say). The main character is a really likable fellow and he's trying to figure out if the stories his grandfather told him about these children are real or not.

It's a beautiful book full of old photos and I really enjo ...more

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Mar 11, 2014 Kristen rated it liked it

Shelves: young-adult

Review originally published at http://seriestracker.wordpress.com.

Filled with wonderful description imagine it to settings and adjectives galore, enough to make you feel like you could reach out and touch the setting and the characters, Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs pereguine1conjured extraordinarily detailed images in my mind from start to finish. I will note, that despite my expectations of getting to read a very creepy story (from reviews and descriptions I read o Review originally published at http://seriestracker.wordpress.com.

Filled with wonderful description imagine it to settings and adjectives galore, enough to make you feel like you could reach out and touch the setting and the characters, Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs pereguine1conjured extraordinarily detailed images in my mind from start to finish. I will note, that despite my expectations of getting to read a very creepy story (from reviews and descriptions I read on goodreads and amazon), the title says it better – it’s peculiar.

From the start, the set up seemed to indicate that I was going to get some sort of scary experience. We had some sort of monster, more than one mystery and a murder. The photographs even encouraged the notion that I was going to be on the edge of my seat, startled often and gasping for fear. The nail biting suspense never really materialized however.

Instead of suspense, we got peculiarity. And it was a fair trade. The author built a world, quickly set out rules (even if they were a little bit difficult to follow at times) and dropped us into the world with out leaving me feeling like this book was nothing more than a set up for more to come. Instead, there was action and answers and all sorts of information thrown at me in such a way that it didn’t feel like it was the first book in a series. Instead it felt like I was watching a movie – you know how from the start of a film you get lots of senses engaged at one because you can see and hear the world, you don’t need to read pages of words to build it in your mind’s eye – that’s how this felt. I could see everything in front of me; I wasn’t stressed to build the world in my mind because the author did it in such a descriptive it yet subtle manner it was already done for me.

The author also managed to balance the use of a lot of adjectives in the perfect way. I never felt that they were gratuitous or drowning out the story. I only wonder if the photographs which were included help this on such a scale as to make reading the book without them impossible. But that doesn’t really matter since they are included!

Normally time travel books give me migraines. I say this constantly. I often struggle with the paradoxes and many authors’ failure to account for them. I often struggle just as much with stories that do address them as well. But here, the notion of time travel is a great plot device and it is handled in such a unique way so as to make things not confusing and not full of paradox pitfalls and potholes.

I believe one reason for this is the nature of the time loop as an element of the story. I haven’t encountered a time loop like this in my reading before (and I am sure they are out there, I just can’t recall reading a book with that as an integral plot point before). Another reason is likely because the author addresses the time issue head on relatively early on (after we discover about the loops) by having Jacob talk about the future and with the clever device of Milliard’s journal and research on the day the peculiar children live in. It’s also helpful that while we see another time it’s not your traditional time travel. It was like in 1940s version of Groundhog Day billmurray(if you don’t know what I am talking about there – imdb it – and know that in college I wrote an entire 25-page paper on that movie and the nature of time travel). And we all know that no matter how hard Bill Murray’s character, Phil, tried to screw things up when the day reset he was the only one who remembered anything. And no matter how many cars he crashed or what he did, everyone was back to normal and healthy in the morning. (Although I wonder if the author has seen that movie, because it would have been clever and appropriate to have Jacob make some sort of joke/reference to the movie, and that didn’t happen!)

If I had to nitpick a tiny bit, I would find a little bit of fault with the contradiction that the children really were all still children. Don’t get me wrong they behaved mostly like children and their bodies certainly had the outward appearance of children. But there were times it wasn’t really clear how old each one of them was – not in the sense of how old they would be if they left the loop but how old they were as far as Miss Peregrine sees them. In fact, Miss Peregrine at one point reminds Jacob that they are just children, but I don’t think it’s quite that simple. To me any character who lives the same day over and over and over again, even though their bodies may not age and they may still closely resemble children, they would eventually learn things that aren’t usually learned by children. And I do think we see some of this in some of the ways the children act. Additionally, I admit to sometimes losing track of how old Emma is supposed to be. She’s close enough to Jacob’s age to kiss him and have been romantic with his grandfather, but she acts much younger at times and so I had to remind myself that she was supposed to be a teenager, not a 10-year old.

But that is a tiny little criticism because this book really was a joyreturn to sanctuary 2 to read. Normally, this is where I would say that I’m jumping right into the next book (since it is already available) however I see that Sarah Gilman’s next book out and I must turn my attention to that first. I have been checking goodreads to see when the next return to sanctuary book would be published, and it is out!!! I can’t wait to crack open deep in Crimson (the second book) and wings of redemption (one of those half installments)!! I admit that it’s been out for a few months and I missed it at first, but I have a lot of series that I try to keep track of, not always tremendously successfully when it comes to publication dates … (My review – which is a “I love it” – of the first in that series can be found here: http://seriestracker.wordpress.com/20...). Then I’ll turn my attention back to Miss Peregrine and her peculiar children (Hollow City)peregrine2. ...more

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Oct 13, 2011 Chris rated it really liked it

Shelves: series, scifi-fantasy-paranormal, fiction

How nice to find there are still some original ideas in the world. The combination of old photographs and a really well-written story combine to create a funny, dark, and intriguing novel. Jacob Portman is a pretty typical teenager living an upper class life in Florida. As a child he listened eagerly to the monster stories his grandfather told. He even enjoyed the pictures Grandpa had that showed a girl who appears to be levitating or a boy who is invisible. Of course as he gets older Jacob deci ...more

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Oct 12, 2012 Laura rated it it was amazing

Very engaging story and light wonderful read. I recommend!

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Sep 16, 2011 Ashley rated it really liked it

Shelves: paranormal-themed, series

I am very surprised this book isn't rated higher. It was highly engrossing and exciting from start to finish. I am eager to continue the series and see what adventures the peculiar children have traveling time.
...more

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