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  • Essay / Characters and photos from Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

    Ransom Riggs, an American filmmaker and writer, first had the idea for a novel with pictures when he chanced upon some Sinister vintage photos. Ransom recalls, “photographs suggest stories even if we don’t know who the people are or when exactly they were taken” (Staskiewicz 1). From the photos he began a story and the more he wrote, the more inherent it became that he searched for more. He ended up scouring swap meets and flea markets to find evocative photos that he thought deserved a place in his novel. With 349 pages of a storyline that defies categorization, strangely intriguing characters, and eye-catching, eccentric, and archaic photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a quirky and remarkable young adult novel. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Category, or genre, is what gives a novel a sense of belonging in the literary world. The category is what separates books into groups so that readers can identify a favorite and select other novels that are ideally the same. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a whole other category in itself. SGB, in Audiofile Magazine, writes: "In addition to creating one of the best YA titles in recent memory, Riggs has also produced a clever and unusual first-person time travel story." In addition to time travel – or the time continuum in which September 3, 1940 plays out over and over again – as an element of the storyline, the novel also features the craziest characters. Majorie Kehe – in the Christian Science Monitor – says: “Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is where a handful of the world's neglected and forgotten 'special' people rise again to tell their stories and attempt to discover themselves a niche in the world. It’s today.” With a first-person point of view written in a time-looping travel format and characters who defy reality and all that is possible, many agree that Riggs' novel is category-defying. full part. As mentioned above, the characters are a vital part of what makes Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children such a quirky and adorable novel. A Publisher's Weekly article illustrates the same sentiment by saying, "It's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children] an enjoyable, eccentric read, characterized by well-developed characters." In addition to the characters in the novel being well-constructed, they also provide readers with a story of their own. The article goes on to say, "Riggs creates supernatural stories and identities for those depicted in them (a boy crawling with bees, a girl with untamed hair carrying a chicken)" (Publisher's Weekly 1). Every novel has its memorable share of characters, but Ransom Riggs takes it a step further by not only developing characters who share their own personal history with the reader – outside of the main storyline featuring Jacob Portman and his quest to uncover the truth about the past of his grandfather. – but by developing characters that are both well-developed and frightening. This, in the literary world, is no easy task and something that only enriches the storyline of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. The most distinctive feature of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is the inclusion of photographs in its pages. Not only do photos make. 2013.