Finally, As Promised . . . .

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

by Ransom Riggs
Quirk Books
ISBN-10: 1594744769
ISBN-13: 978-1594744761

Jacob Portman’s grandfather is a bit peculiar. He collects guns, disappears from time to time, and is always telling strange and exciting tales of odd children and horrible monsters and an enchanted island off the coast of Wales. And then there’s that old photo album, filled with strange pictures of weird kids. Jacob isn’t sure if the stories are true or not. He used to believe, but now he’s older and knows better. Unfortunately, Grandpa is older too and may be getting a bit senile.

One day, he gets a call from Grandpa asking for the key to his gun locker. They’ve found him, Grandpa says, and he needs his guns to fight them. Thinking he’s really lost it, Jacob heads over to his house with a friend to calm him down. They find Grandpa near the woods, looking like he’s been mauled by an animal. With his last dying breath, he leaves Jacob a strange cryptic message about a loop and Emerson and finding the bird.

Jacob begins having bad dreams about Grandpa’s death and starts seeing Dr. Golan, a psychiatrist. As he learns more about himself, he also learns more about Grandpa, and it seems his stories may have been true after all. Jacob decides he’s going to Grandpa’s island for some answers. Dr. Golan thinks it’s a good idea. Jacob’s parents agree to let him go, but his father, an as yet to be published writer living off his wife’s money, will go, too. He’ll do some research for a new book. A book about birds.

There’s not much on Grandpa’s island. There’s only one hotel and one phone, and there’s no reception for cells or internet. Jacob goes exploring and finds Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, but there isn’t much left to it. It was bombed September 3, 1940. As he returns to the hotel, he notices something odd. The cars and trucks are gone. Instead, there are carts and horses and everyone is dressed funny. Somehow, he’s managed to end up in the past, on September 3rd, 1940, the day the bomb fell. And that’s when he meets the girl from Grandpa’s photo album - the girl who can hold fire.

The adventure begins.

* * * * *

This story is far too involved to give a complete synopsis, but no matter what you like to read, there’s something here for everyone. Riggs gets into time travel, history, fantasy, mystery, monsters, and even romance. He’s got so many irons in the fire here, and he pulls them all together nicely to create a very involving story with lots of twists and surprises. And Riggs doesn’t rely on just the adventure. Jacob also struggles with his relationship with his father, who feels inadequate because he’s living off his wife, can’t sell a book, and doubts his talents. But as the story moves on, you can see their attempts to become closer, as well as his father’s struggle to be his own person.

The ending was a bit disappointing because nowhere on the flap is there a hint that this is just the first of a series, so I assumed I was going to get the whole story, bust as I got closer and closer to the end, it became clear that not everything was going to be resolved. This book is merely the beginning of a story that could go on for as long as Riggs wants it to. The ending does work, though, as an ending for the book.

The drawbacks? It’s a first novel and reads like it didn’t get a lot of editing. There are lots of anomalies, like characters from the past who know nothing of the ‘real’ (Jacob’s) world, and then are suddenly explaining who Jeffrey Dahmer is. Jacob tells us over and over he’s not a good a liar, then brags about how cool his lies to Dr. Golan are. We’re told confined spaces scare the hell out of him, but he’s never scared in confined spaces, and when something is suddenly needed - a cell phone, a photo album - the characters just happen to have them when we never saw how they got them.

But in spite of all that, I really liked it. The story made me not care about the writing. It pulled me along from scene to scene for the most part. Riggs makes good use of all his characters. They have depth and substance, and there are no one scene walk-ons. And there’s lots of mystery and intrigue, not to mention those cool photographs.

Will I be buying future books in the series? You bet.

On a marketing note, Quirk Books are the people who brought you Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, another best seller, as well as The Strange Case of Benjamin Button. A movie is already in the works for Miss Peregrine. Seems to me that if you write about the strange, the odd, the quirky, this might be the place for your book.

Poetry Friday

Theories of Time and Space

You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one-
by-one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion – dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on a mangrove swamp – buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry – tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph – who you were –
will be waiting when you return

Natasha Trethewey

Start your day's journey off by traveling over to A Year of Literacy Coaching for more great poetry.

Photo courtesy of Gail Des Jardins
View more of her work here

ARGH!!!

Sorry, folks. Miss Peregrine will have to wait for Saturday. I didn't have as much time as I thought I would.

I've Just Read . . . .

Ship Breaker
by Paolo Bacigalupi
Little, Brown & Co.
ISBN-10: 0316056219
ISBN-13: 978-0316056212


In a not-too-distant future, global warming and extreme weather have played havoc on the world. On America’s Gulf Coast, hurricanes have ravaged the shores several times, leaving those left behind to make their ways as best they can. Nailer, a teenage boy, finds work with a crew of ship breakers, people who break down and salvage what they can from the many oil tankers rusting away on their shores. Nailer’s job is to creep through ducts and pipes in the ships and collect any copper wire or tubing he can find.

Existence is a struggle, and apart from his lousy job, which he is lucky to have, he is saddled with a horrible father, similar to Huck Finn's, who drinks and drugs and beats Nailer for any, or no reason at all.

On the bright side, Nailer is part of a crew that he trusts, and the person he trusts most - a girl named Pima - is also his best friend. They look down on the ‘swanks’ - the rich folks - while dreaming of becoming one of them.

And then one day, after a storm, Nailer spies a ship - a new clipper ship - washed up on a nearby shore. If he and Pima can salvage it, it could be their ‘lucky strike,’ their road to something better. The trick is how to do it without anyone else - particularly Nailer’s father - from finding out about it and taking it from them.

Nailer manages to get out to explore the ship and finds a survivor - an almost dead teenage girl named Nita. His choice is to kill her and salvage the ship, or save her and risk losing the ship. He elects to save her. When word about the ship and the girl gets out, Nailer’s father comes calling. His idea is to salvage the ship and ransom Nita, who is the daughter of a rich shipping magnate.

Nailer pretends to go along with him, all the while hoping to ditch his father, and regain the girl and the ship for himself, but that’s a bit difficult to do since his father has a genetically engineered half-man/half monster named Tool watching over Nailer and Nita, and the monster has been engineered to gladly die in order to carry out its master’s wishes.

However, things change quickly when Nailer learns Nita is not the helpless, pampered rich girl he imagined, and that Tool is not a mindless tool of his father’s. Can the three of them work together to get what they each want?

* * * * *

I liked Ship Breaker for the most part. It’s an adventure story, and that’s what it relies on - the adventure. The plot is more than plausible. I didn’t have any trouble believing something like this could happen in our near future, and Bacigalupi takes the plot from beginning to end very nicely. He keeps the tension and suspense high, and there’s always a reason to turn the page. One thing I especially liked was that India and China had become the world’s new power brokers (although that’s just background, and not important to the story.)

If there are any weaknesses in the novel, for me it’s that Ship Breaker could have gone farther than it did. There are no subtleties, no nuances or shades of gray. It doesn’t raise questions. The focus here is on plot, not character, even to the extent of neglecting Nailer’s relationship with his father.

His father is bad and he doesn’t like the man, and that’s as far as it goes. We never learn if Nailer loves him or hates him or if it’s something in between. He doesn’t ask questions about the relationship that a kid in that position would ask. The relationship is what it is. Even when his father dies, there’s no gladness, no sadness, no relief, no mixed emotions. He shakes with revulsion and walks away and the story moves on. Had Bacigalupi delved into their relationship a bit more, it would have made the story a little more complex and taken it to another level, I think.

I also wished Pima had played a bigger part in the adventure. She's basically left behind once Nita appears on the scene.

On a technical note, I have to admit it was annoying to read the name Nailer over and over and over when he/his/him would have worked just as well or better.

Amazon says the book is for grades 7 and up which seemed accurate to me, although I can see this being read by kids a bit younger. Older teens may find it a bit too soft and safe when compared to Collins’ Hunger Games or Walter Dean Myers’ Monster, another Printz award winner.

All in all, it was a good read, worth the time spent on it.

Stop by Thursday for a look at the New York Times besteller, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

Mentor Monday - Google Earth

If you’re a writer and you don’t know about Google Earth, you should really get acquainted. Google Earth is exactly what it sounds like - the Earth, brought to you by Google. You start out with the Earth, type in where you’d like to go, and it takes you there, or you can explore on your own. Want to see what Sendai, Japan looks like after the tsunami? Type it in. Want to see the Great Pyramid at Giza? Type it in and you’re there. Want to see your own house? Type in your address. You zoom in from outer space and get a bird’s eye view.

What good is this to a writer? Well, let’s say you’re writing a story that takes place in a city far, far away. Let's say Paris. Just zoom in, and there it is.

That's at about 20,000 feet. All those icons show churches, businesses, museums, parks, and historic sites. A Portuguese American club lets you know what ethnic group lives in the neighborhood, which might suggest a name for your character. Churches, temples and mosques let you know if your population is mostly Catholic, Jewish, or something else. The liquor stores or Starbucks on every corner tell you something about socio-economic levels, all fodder that can help with characterization and description.

Perhaps you’re writing a thriller. Need to know how far it is from the Palace at Versailles to the US embassy? Need to know what the palace looks like? It’s right there. Just zoom in closer.

They even have a street view, so you can walk around your site. You can see any place you need to describe without ever leaving your desk.


Maybe your latest WIP takes place on an imginary desert world? Check out the Gobi and Sahara for ideas. Are there castles in your story? Buzz over a few to see how they use terrain for defense or to see how they were built. Look at the differences between an English castle and a German castle. Do you need to know what the bayou looks like, or a seaside town? Does your story take place in Hollywood or a South African diamond mine? Google Earth can help you. You can even go to the moon and Mars if you like. While there’s not much to see (yet) you can at least get place names.

And what about non-fiction? If you’re writing about places or national monuments, the benefits are obvious. You get a bird’s eye view of whatever place or monument you’re writing about. Doing volcanoes? You can go to any volcano on Earth. You can stare right into the mouth of one.

Writing about Nascar or baseball? Visit a few tracks or stadiums. Doing the Olympics? You have aerial views of any Olympic village you want to visit. Biographies? Visit your person’s hometown or the place of their demise. I haven’t explored copyright issues on using these pictures, but it may be worth looking into if you’re paying for your own photographs.

Google Earth comes with lots of extras, too. You can see earthquakes in real time (not the actual quakes, but dots on the map that show position and strength.) They place shipwrecks and ocean expeditions, what seafood you’ll find off any given coast, and even water temperature. You can go back in time (to the inception of Google Earth) and see Sendai, Japan before the quake, and after it. The same with the gulf coast oil spill - very helpful if that’s what you’re writing about.

There are so many things here that I haven’t yet explored, or simply touched the surface of. Some museums and archeological sites have even made it possible to tour them in street view. Unfortunately, street view isn't available everywhere. Mostly it’s just the larger, more well known cities. But perhaps, in time . . . .

The drawbacks? 500 feet, give or take, seems to be about as close as you can get without everything going blurry. And when you go back in time, you can only go back to the times they have images for.

So how do you get Google Earth? How else - google it and download. Or you can use this link. It’s free, it’s fun, and it’s fascinating.

Happy exploring.

All photos were taken on Google Earth.