Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

Growing up, Jacob Portman thought his Grandpa Portman was the most fascinating person he knew. He had fought in wars, crossed oceans and deserts, joined the circus, and spoke at least half a dozen languages. The stories Jacob loved the most were the stories about Grandpa’s life in a Welsh children’s home. Grandpa claimed it was an enchanted place, on an island where the sun always shined and nobody ever got sick or died. The island was designed to keep him and his friends safe from the monsters who were after them for their mysterious and magical abilities. Jacob never doubted his grandpa’s colorful stories, after all, he had spooky photographs and crumbling, hand-written letters to their truth.

As he grew older, Jacob began to doubt the existence of children who could fly, or turn invisible, or lift boulders. He believed the stories were a coping mechanism for Grandpa to deal the tragedies of World War II. He asked for stories less and less, until Grandpa no longer told them. However, after a tragic family event, his grandfather’s cryptic last words, and a mysterious letter from a Miss Peregrine, Jacob decides to search for his grandfather’s childhood home and the truth. His journey leads him to an island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers a crumbling orphanage. As he explores the decrepit island and dilapidated halls, discovering more haunting photographs and dusty letters, he learns the children who once resided there were much more than peculiar: they may have been unsafe, banished to the island for a reason, and they are, impossibly, still alive.

Written around found vintage photographs that are interspersed throughout the text along with handwritten letters, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is filled with beautiful, haunting, richly detailed imagery and prose. The photographs and text together build a suspenseful story that alternates between fantasy and reality, past and present. Part coming-of-age story, part time-traveling fantasy, part mystery, part art project, but wonderfully strange and fully unique. Fantasy and thriller fans will enjoy this novel. Fans of David Lynch, Lemony Snickett, and Tim Burton will find this appealing as well.

Tim Burton will be directing the film adaptation, set for release in 2015. The sequel to the book, Hollow City, will be published in January 2014.

The call number for this book is PS 3618 .I3985 M57 2011 in the Juvenile section.

                               – Christina Nofziger, Access Services Specialist

Book review for The Cat’s Table, by Michael Ondaatje

In need of a little light summer reading, I picked up the Michael Ondaatje’s latest novel The Cat’s Table from the Popular Fiction Collection on the basis of several glowing recommendations. Ondaatje weaves together a beautiful narrative that boarders on the poetic in its language and imagery.

The tone is autobiographical, and though it is fictional, the story does borrow from elements of the author’s life. It follows 11-year-old protagonist, Michael, as he makes his way from his native Sri Lanka across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, and through the Mediterranean Sea to make a new life with his family in England. During the three weeks he is aboard the Oronsay, Michael is seated at the Cat’s Table during meal times, a table full of outcasts at the fringes of society. It is the table furthest away from the prestigious captain’s table. It is also here that he befriends Cassius and Rhamadin, fellow Sri Lankan school boys, who he goes on to form life long memories with.

The mystery of a prisoner unfolds as the book goes on – a prisoner with a mysterious past, only seen after everyone, except for the curious boys, has gone to bed. He emerges with shackles around his hands and feet, with guards at his side, and is allowed a nightly walk on the deck. As the narrative jumps between Michael’s young self on the ship and his adult self, established and settled in Canada, we learn how this slowly unfolding mystery ties people together, and has a lasting impact on the lives of the people we learn to know.

Ondaatje’s writing is much like the ship he writes about – it moves slowly, sometimes feeling like it has stopped moving altogether, caught up in dream like imagery and winding thought processes; but then one comes to the end, and realizes one has crossed oceans. The story is intricately and masterfully crafted; creating a tangible world out of the liminal space that transition creates, between one land and another, between chapters of life, between childhood and adulthood. Despite the storms, the crashing waves, and the navigation through misty canals, in some ways, it is the story of any state of change.