Book Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Jacob Portman feels that his life has never had much of a meaning to it. His parents–his mother a rich woman who likes to show off her spoils of home décor, and his father an amateur ornithologist and a wannabe nature writer–he’s not real close to. His only friend, a chain-smoking punk-rock dresser, is the closest thing to a best friend he has. And his workmates pretty much hate his guts. There’s really no one in the world Jacob is close to. Except Grandpa Portman.        
         

These are the stories that enthralled Jacob when he was a little boy, snuggled under the covers as Grandpa Portman relayed the mystery behind them. They were filled with the children, peculiar beings with strange and even frightening powers. An invisible boy. A girl who could hold fire in her hand without so much as a burn. “I’ve got pictures!” said Grandpa Portman. And his stories came to an even bigger life and reality to Jacob as he gazed upon the aged, monochrome photographs of the children Grandpa Portman used to live with. “We were peculiar,” he’d say.

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