12/7/11
Period 3
Adventure and fantasy
Book Review
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs is a multi-genre book of adventure, action and fantasy. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is a terrific book that should be shared with all kinds of readers.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children starts when an evil monster kills Jacob’s grandfather in the woods near his house. Before dying Jacob’s grandfather Abe, tells Jacob to find Miss Peregrine and the peculiar children with special abilities. He often talked to Jacob about them when he was little. With only a few clues from his grandfather, Jacob and his father traveled to a small place off of Whales called Cairn Holm Island where his grandfather grew up after escaping from Germany in World War II. Jacob looks for the orphanage and peculiar children on the island while worrying about monsters and wondering if they are even real. Jacob tells the whole story in first person and one theme of the story that I interpreted was that life is very complicated and individuals have many choices but life always works itself out.

On a scale of one to five, when one is that I would never recommend it and five is that I would recommend it to everyone, I rate this book a five. It is a five because of its use of real photos throughout the book and because of the ongoing adventure in the story. I really enjoyed this book because of several reasons. One was because most of the book was fantasy, such as monsters in the world and children with abilities to do things like float in air, summon fire and control bees. That fantasy makes me wonder if anything like evil monsters could actually be possible. Another reason was that it was very adventurous and exciting throughout the entire book and made me want to read more. The book also had very descriptive language that helped me see and visualize the setting and what was happening. One example of the descriptive language is this quote: “There was no moon and no movement in the underbrush but our own, and yet somehow I knew just when to raise my flashlight and just where to aim it, and for an instant in that narrow cut of light I saw a face that seemed to have been transplanted directly from the nightmares of my childhood. It stared back with eyes that swam in dark liquid, furrowed trenches of carbon-black flesh loose on its hunched frame, its mouth hinged open grotesquely so that a mass of long eel-like tongues could wriggle out” (Riggs 33). Finally, the best and most unique thing about this book was that it included real photos that went along with the story and were what the story was based on. I would recommend this book to everyone I know, because it is so good that it appeals to everyone, but especially to those who like reading adventure stories.