Iāve always had a healthy dose of skepticism, having been a scientist before I was an author. I look for the con when somethingās too good to be true, even in fictionā¦so donāt insult me by saying, āa magic amulet that makes everyone nice all the time.ā If you want me to believe in pixie dust, tell me whatās in place to keep pixie dust smugglers from rigging the system. I raised smart, critical-minded kids, so I always pointed them to my own favorite young-audience books: those that felt real, even if they were fantastical, instead of ones with the more common ājust trust meā attitude.
If there were children in the world this peculiar, thereād need to be a system to deal with them. I hate it when weāre just expected to accept odd things in fiction without their logical consequences, but this book doesnāt do that. Yep, things would suck for kids like theseā¦which is why theyād need a home and a caretaker as peculiar as they were.
What I really liked about this book wasnāt the setup, though, so much as the part where we really figure out whatās protecting the Home and why it was created in the way it was. I canāt really say more without spoiling things, but it poses a very interesting dilemma: a choice as gray in scope as any real-world dilemma.
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here - one of whom was his own grandfatherā¦
