FEATURE BOOK OF THE WEEK Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

FEATURE BOOK OF THE WEEK

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN

by

Ransom Riggs

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. 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. 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. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here - one of whom was his own grandfather - were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island for good reason. And somehow - impossible though it seems - they may still be alive.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 I was born on a 200-year-old farm in rural Maryland, where at the tender age of five I decided that I definitely wanted to be a farmer when I grew up, because being a farmer meant driving tractors.  Then, partially as a result of my new ambition, my mom moved us far away to Florida, where there were relatively few farms but lots and lots of old people and not very much for kids to do.  In retrospect, it was precisely because there wasn’t a lot to do, and because the internet didn’t exist and cable TV was only like twelve channels back then, that I was forced to make my own fun and my own stories -- and that’s what I’m still doing, only now I get paid for it.  So thanks, sleepy Florida fishing village!

I grew up writing stories and making videos in the backyard with my friends.  I knew I wanted to do one or both of those things in some professional capacity when I got older, but I didn’t know how.  For three summers during high school I attended the University of Virginia’s Young Writer’s Workshop, and I still consider it one of the shaping experiences of my life.  I met so many great, brilliant people, and it convinced me that it was possible to make a life for myself as a writer.

I also knew I wanted to make movies.  So I compromised, and went to Kenyon College first to study English,  then moved out to Los Angeles to go to film school at the University of Southern California.  Looking back, that was a lot of time and money spent on school, but I don’t regret it at all.  Being part of those creative communities gave me lots of time to practice writing things and making movies before I had to go out and try to do either of those things professionally.

So now I do a lot of different things, which can make for a rambling and confused-sounding answer when I am asked, as I often am in work-obsessed Los Angeles, “So ... what do you do?”  But I will attempt to answer this question, in list form:

• I write books.  First, a non-fiction book about Sherlock Holmes.  Then a novel about peculiar children (which comes out June 7th).  Then a book of found photographs with writing on them, coming out in 2012.  I'm fairly certain there are more novels on the way. I can feel them clanking around half-formed in my brain.

• I make movies.  I went to film school and made a lot of shorts there, then after I graduated I got jobs making short and some book trailers, too, like this and this.  I also write screenplays and make the occasional video blog.

• I word-blog for mentalfloss.com.  My favorite column is a series of photo-travel-essays called Strange Geographies. (author biography retrieved from author's website.