Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children 
Author: Ransom Riggs
Series: Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, Book 1 
Release date: June 7, 2011 
Pubished by: Quirk Books 
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Jacob is trying to figure out what is really going on after his grandfather is killed in a violent struggle which everyone else says was animals. The problem is that Jacob disagrees because he saw the terrible thing his grandfather was ranting about too...or is he going crazy now too?

My thoughts: I've put off writing this for over 2 months now. I sadly didn't think much of this one. My middle school students, and a few teachers, have been telling me I need to read this series for years now. I have always found the covers very creepy and was unwilling to make the plunge just based on that. When this book came up as a suggestion for our Book Club, we jumped on it because most of us either owned it and had not read it yet, or had also heard that they should read it from students and staff. I made sure to read the whole book, hoping I might change my opinion along the way but it never became more then "meh" for me. I certainly didn't hate it, but a did not like it either sadly.

The basic idea for the book of using these fascinating old photographs to build a story from is a fantastic idea that I used on a much smaller scale back in my English Teacher days by putting one photograph up for students to free-journal about at the beginning of class to "get the brain flowing". Working from a picture was one of their favorite ones for journaling and made for fun reading later for me as well. 

Jacob was a well written character, as were many in the book, but I never could connect with him or with any other character either. The entire thing felt so incredibly already done. It's even extremely X-men honestly when you think about it. 

I am still glad that so many love these and have recommended them to their friends, and I will continue to recommend it as a read-alike to many others when patrons are looking for a book like this...but I will not be reading any farther in this series. I am very glad that I took the time to try it though because I always try to read the "hot book" when they suddenly become incredibly popular. This time I will just remain in the minority on this one. Oh well. :/

Final thoughts: Even though this book wasn't in my wheel-house, Tim Burton's movies almost always are which means I cannot wait for this movie!! Check out the trailer:

It's gorgeous! 

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