Hollow City and Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children - by Ransom Riggs

Hollow City is the excellent sequel to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which is also a wonderful book. The fascinatingly unique factor with these books is that the author spent a lot of time shuffling through yard sales, antique shops and curiosity stores to collect old, unusual and often times outright creepy photographs of people. Riggs then studied all these photos and creatively imagined characters out of them, calling them “peculiar” children - meaning they were kids with special talents. Such as the ability to create fire, control bees, unusual strength, dream interpretation and fortune telling, etc. Once the characters were imagined, the author then used other photos to think of things that may have happened to these peculiars and thus, you have the first book - Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Eventually, eager fans of the first book got into the act and helped out by sending in the strange pictures they could find at various places around their own home cities. That all helped develop book two, Hollow City.

Miss Peregrine’s home is a safe place where these exceptional kids can live and learn together, safe from the intolerance and fear shown to them by the “normal” people in the rest of the world. Miss Peregrine herself is a particularly powerful peculiar who can, among other things, control time and change from her human self to a bird and back. She transforms into a peregrine falcon, to be exact. There are several dozen exceptionals like herself spread across the world, all operating special homes meant to protect the peculiar children. And all these classy old ladies have the same incredible powers, but they each have different bird last names, which is a pretty cool plot point.

The time control part of their powers manifests in their ability to create loops in time. To completely guard these peculiar children, they live inside time loops so they never age and are (supposedly) entirely safe from the dangers of the world. I will say that though the writer’s explanations are excellent, the physics/science behind understanding the loops is pretty complicated so younger readers will potentially be confused by it all. Come to think of it, I think I’m doing a pretty terrible job of explaining all this right now but trust me - Riggs does a rather outstanding job of making it all work in the book. But you do have to have a mind for it to keep all the goings on straight as you read.

In a nutshell, a non-peculiar boy somewhat mistakenly goes back in time in one of these loops (which isn’t supposed to be able to happen) and he befriends all the mysterious kids at Miss Peregrine’s home. Right about that time, there is an uprising by these horribly evil people called Wights who are trying to harness the powers of the peculiars and then use them to rule the world. These Wights attack the kids using scary - nay terrifying - monsters called Hollows. As the loops break down and the Wights press forth, we learn that Jacob (the boy) IS actually peculiar in a very special and useful way, which makes him decide to stay in the past and help the peculiars survive. Their remarkable, dangerous, intriguing, fantastic journey plays out over the two books and I am pretty sure there is a third coming to round out the trilogy.

As I mentioned before, the really phenomenal parts in these books are the antique photos and the ways the author incorporates the images. The actual pictures are shown throughout the books so you can see what Riggs was looking at whilst imagining the multitude of characters, places and happenings. Hollow City seemed to show more photos than the first book, displaying dozens of the strange and marvelous photos, all related to the story in different ways. Such as a dog smoking a pipe (who in the book is a talking dog with a very intelligent, gentlemanly quality) and a photo of a seemingly invisible person sitting in front of a mirror in a nice suit (who in the book is, of course, an invisible boy). Keep in mind that these and all the others are all real antique photos gathered from searching the deep corners, bottomless bins and random shoeboxes in many odd and unusual places.

So yes, the photos are really cool and kids will dig them but the novels also deliver some very challenging and scary parts too. As I mentioned, the loops are definitely confusing and when the peculiar children travel in and out of them to different times in history, things get a little complex. It’s important to note again that YES, Riggs does an absoultely fantastic job of explaining it all and you can clearly tell the whole system was well planned out and thoughtfully written....but it could all still be a major “say whut?!” moment for younger readers. Additionally, there are many characters in the two books so you have to keep straight lots of names and peculiar powers. The photos help here because you know what each one is supposed to look like, but it’s still a challenge.

And finally there are the frightening Wights and Hollows. The Wights are humans who’ve been killed by evil spirits - kind of - and then reanimated by these bad guys. They have empty white eyes so that’s how you know they’re dangerous. The Hollows are large, slimy, hideous creatures with multiple tentacles and disgusting long black tongues. They only exist to kill peculiar kids and eat them. I remember the first book to be fairly intensely packed with the Wights and Hollows. The second one I don’t think had them as much but these potentially terrifying monsters are definitely still there and could be a concern for sensitive minds

I’m not certain what age group these books are intended for but Jacob, in the story, is 16 - so I’d say readers shouldn’t be much younger than that. Unless you know that they like and can handle darker, spookier, more intense reads...such as The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman or the Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snicket. And keep in mind, there are the potentially confusing time travel loops and creepy antique photos to deal with, so it really takes a more mature reader to dive into these two fabulous books and come out digging them as much as I did. Both are fine for age-appropriate boys and girls since there is a pretty even mix-up of both amongst all the main characters.

You adults out should enjoy these two great novels and then decide if/when they might be right for your youngsters. The writing is top notch and it’s an expertly crafted story full of splendid imagination so you will be entertained. Oh and a movie version of Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is expected in 2016 - directed by Mr. Tim Burton! Check out the books now and then be looking forward to a surely phenomenal film.

Happy reading!