'i came to a place where the path emerged from the woods. in one direction lay home and everything i knew, unmysterious and ordinary and safe.' penned by ransom riggs, miss peregrine's home for peculiar children is one such tale - it leads you to uncharted territories and opens new dimensions, whether metaphorically or literally.
i took the advice of my best friend jerlen (via our facebook group, 'booklust'). she said that the story is compelling and what's even more captivating are the odd pictures you'd find in the book. so off to the mall i went last week and found myself a copy from fully booked.
jacob is a 'regular' teenager whose life was dramatically altered when his grandfather died of unnatural causes. for years, his grandfather has told him of strange stories, mostly without proof, about having lived in a place where peculiar beings existed. everything went downhill when, on his grandfather's death, he saw odd apparitions and his grandfather's last words included finding a 'bird,' a 'loop,' an 'old man's grave,' and 'september 3rd 1940.'
unbeknownst to jacob, a grander plan has commenced and things beyond his wildest imaginings will soon be revealed to him. his grandfather's last words never did escape him, no matter how much he tried to shrug them off. and after getting the help of a psychiatrist, his father agreed to take him to a trip to cairnholm, an island off the coast of wales in the united kingdom. while he really did not realize what was waiting or what has been waiting for him there, it was only a matter of time before he would be introduced to a portal to go back to september 3rd 1940 and see those few who remain.
the story has a few surprises in it - the notion of finding love on a different plane or place, the author also dabbled a bit on time traveling, heroism at a point when you have lost all belief in yourself and that part of each of us that always yearned to be extraordinary - just that we are blinded by our own faults or that we, almost always, needed someone to tell us just how wonderfully strange we are.
it is something that i have enjoyed reading and i do make it a point to take a peek at the next few pages to check scary photographs, just to make sure i won't be taken aback when i flip them as i go on with the story. somehow, having read jacob's adventure with his peculiar lot, i realized that i have not grown old (too much, that is). i mean i think i have grown up, but there will always be a fraction of me that would want to remember being a kid, that fraction that needed, every once in a while, the capacity to believe that i am still worthy of such fun and adventure and that it is something i can will myself to go back to.
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