As he looks at the photos, he notices that there are six children watching him, asking if he is Abe, his grandfather's name. He wonders if Miss Peregrine had not died after all, or if someone took on her identity in the letter.ĭetermined to find some final shred of the truth, Jacob goes back to the abandoned house one last time and finds a trunk of old photographs identical to the ones his grandfather used to show him, of children doing strange things like levitating or holding fire. To Jacob, this does not make sense because he found a letter from Headmistress Alma Peregrine to his grandfather dated only fifteen years before. The locals tell him stories of the German bombs that wiped the place out and killed all the inhabitants on September 3, 1940, leaving Jacob's grandfather as the only survivor. While his father studies the bird species on the island, Jacob hikes through the woods and bog to the house, but finds that it is completely dilapidated and abandoned. His search takes him and his father to Cairholm, a sparsely populated island in Wales where the children's home that his grandfather grew up in is located. One day Grandpa Portman is killed by a mysterious creature in the woods, and Jacob sets out on a mission to uncover the meaning behind his cryptic last words and learn at last about his grandfather's veiled past. As he got older, he began to dismiss these as fiction, but still retained his close relationship with his grandfather, who seemed to be getting more senile by the day as he talked of monsters waiting to attack him. Those few who remain.Sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman grew up listening to his grandfather tell him stories of living on an island in a children's home where each child had a supernatural ability of some sort. So it was possible-there were people older than that in Englewood who still lived by themselves and drove-and even if Miss Peregrine had passed away in the time since she'd sent the letter, there might still be people on Cairnholm who could help me, people who had known Grandpa Portman as a kid. Was it possible she was still alive? I did some quick calculations in my head: If she'd been running a children's home in 1939 and was, say, twenty-five at the time, then she'd be in her late nineties today. But the envelope's postmark was fifteen years old. If anyone knew the secrets of his childhood, it would be her. He wanted me to go to the island and find this woman, his old headmistress. For the first time, my grandfather's last words began to make a strange kind of sense. What if the bird my grandfather wanted me to find was actually the woman who'd rescued him-the headmistress of the children's home? Maybe she was still on the island, after all these years, old as dirt but sustained by a few of her wards, children who'd grown up but never left. ” At age seven I'd taken this statement literally, but the headmistress in the picture was smoking a pipe, and her name was Peregrine, a kind of hawk. ” Nine years ago he had sworn that the children's home where he'd lived was protected by one-by “a bird who smoked a pipe. Could it be the same island where my grandfather lived as a boy? Nine months ago he'd told me to “find the bird. Cairnholm Is had to be the island Miss Peregrine had mentioned in her letter.

I knew from studying atlases as a kid that Cymru meant Wales. But who was this headmistress, this Peregrine woman? I studied the envelope for a return address but found only a fading postmark that read Cairnholm Is., Cymru, UK. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive.Ī spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.Įxcerpt from Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (pages 60-61): Was this what my grandfather had meant for me to find? Yes, I thought, it has to be-not the letters of Emerson, but a letter, tucked inside Emerson's book. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. 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. 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.

A strange collection of very curious photographs.

Ms peregrin