Ransom Riggs has a passion other than writing books. He is also an avid collector of odd vintage photographs. A few years ago, he had collected enough on his own to think about putting them all together to form a picture book, but his editor convinced him to think bigger. Riggs found others with his particular zeal for old pictures and was able to draw on even more fantastical ammunition for the story that eventually became "Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children." The book weaves together more than forty photos, some silly, some haunting, with one fictional narrative thread.
Riggs starts his story in the present day, in his home state of Florida. Jacob Portman tells us about his relationship with his grandfather, a Polish immigrant who loves to tell stories about fighting in World War II. Being Jewish, the aging Abraham revels in regaling his grandson with the tales of how, in his youth, he had made war on the monsters who had come to destroy his people, his friends and family. Abe also loves to show off the odd photos from his youth, photos that Jacob has always believed to be doctored in obvious ways, photos of a girl floating above the ground, a scrawny boy holding a boulder aloft with only one hand, a man with no head. The stories Abe tells along with these pictures are as ridiculous as the photos themselves.
When tragedy strikes and grandpa Abe is brutally killed by what the authorities believe to be a pack of wild dogs, only Jacob knows the truth. He alone saw the monster standing in the swamp behind Abe's house, tentacles wriggling out of its mouth like something out of a nightmare. Jacob knows for a fact that it wasn't dogs that killed his grandfather. This knowledge and Abe's lasts words send Jacob on an adventure that takes him to a remote island off the coast of Wales where he discovers a mysterious enclave of gifted young people. This group of children makes Jacob realize that those stories his grandfather had told him all his life hadn't actually been tall tales. These kids have special powers and the school they live in is locked in a temporal loop. Everyone within its confines lives the same day over and over again, September 3rd, 1940. But its like "Groundhog Day," the people locked in the loop are able to alter the events of the day every time the day starts over again if they wish.
Jacob learns that this school is not the only one of its kind on Earth. There are others in different locations locked into loops reliving different days. Each loop is maintained by women who are called ymbrynes and who can also shape-shift in to bird form. This all seems pretty great to Jacob until he realizes that some of the stories his grandfather had always told him could have been interpreted differently in other ways as well. The monsters he talked about fighting might not have been men wearing sharp uniforms emblazoned with swastikas, they might have been actual monsters. There are forces in the world that hunt people with special abilities and it turns out they also desire the power the ymbrynes possess. Unfortunately for Jacob and his new friends, he has lead some of these monsters straight to Miss Peregrines' Home For Peculiar Children.
"Miss Peregrine" was a fun read, and Riggs integrates the fantastic photos with the story in just the right way to make you smile even while you are getting goose bumps. It takes tremendous talent to craft a story like "Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children" out of a random collection of pictures. Riggs' talent at it reminded you though that it's not really that rare. Isn't that what movies and even illustrated books are after all, just a collection of random images woven together by a compelling narrative, often even a fantastically fictional one? The human brain is a great big story telling machine. Give it a series of seemingly moving pictures and a sound track and it will craft an entertaining narrative, give it a tantalizing clue and it will devise an answer to the mystery, give it an adversary it believes legitimate and it will justify acts aggression and self protection.
This what we have done for millennia. We sit around, staring at the flames of a campfire and tell each other stories. We crowd into huts and amphitheaters to hear old favorites or exciting new stories. We create mythologies to explain the inaccessible and to remind ourselves that we have greatness within us. We dedicate our lives to the service of some stories, and we will go to war for others.
We tell ourselves stories every day, about everything we encounter. Some of them are fiction and some of them are lies. Some of them can tear us and even the people we love apart, and some of them can lift us up to greater heights. This book helped you remember that we must be careful with the stories we tell ourselves, that we need to remember we are built to be shaped by our stories. The stories we craft can help us make sense of the sometimes nightmarish realities of the world, they can help us process the most sublime moments of happiness and victory, and ultimately, our stories are the things that outlive us, at least here in this world.
On to the next book!
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