Because We Weren't Like Other People. We Were Peculiar.

I just finished Ready Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs and I have to say I really liked it. There are very few reviews on Goodreads that are praiseworthy. I think most people are generally disappointed because it isn't as creepy as its cover makes it out to be. I mean, this is a young adult novel, so I hope people aren't reading this and expecting Stephen King.

In the beginning, it's suspenseful and it's pretty eerie, after a certain point (which I won't divulge since I don't want spoilers here) it is really about a boy trying to solve this mystery about his grandfather and where he spent his childhood.

The book uses 50 vintage photographs to show these peculiar children and other scenes, which I thought was so interesting. At the end of the book there was an interview with the author and he said that he spent hours looking through photographs to decide which ones he would use and that probably over 100,000 vintage photos passed through his hands while he was deciding. That is amazing to me!

Also, the interviewer asked where he came up with the idea for his book. He told them that most of the time there is no way to trace back in his thoughts how he came up with his ideas, but that this book was different. He said that he really likes vintage photography and that he felt like the most interesting and many times creepy photos were ones of children. He found himself wondering who the children were, and that since he had no way of finding out, he decided to make up their life stories and create a novel about them. How neat is that??

I think that would be an awesome project to use as a teacher. Give each student a vintage photo and have them create a character based on that photo. Who is this person? What is their life like? Do they have a good family life? Do they enjoy school? What do they do for fun? I mean, that is some serious character development work!

Anyways, if you like YA fiction and science-fiction-y, paranormal kind of stuff, I definitely recommend this to you. I read somewhere that this series was supposed to be the new Harry Potter. I don't know that I'd go THAT far, but I did really enjoy the book. ,