Ransom Riggs: Neiti Peregrinen koti eriskummallisille lapsille (Finnish language, 2012, Schildts & Söderströms)
Finnish language
Published Jan. 6, 2012 by Schildts & Söderströms.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a contemporary fantasy debut novel by American author Ransom Riggs. The story is told through a combination of narrative and a mix of vernacular and found photography from the personal archives of collectors listed by the author. This young adult book was originally intended to be a picture book featuring photographs Riggs had collected, but on the advice of an editor at Quirk Books, he used the photographs as a guide from which to put together a narrative. Riggs was a collector of photographs, but needed more for his novel. He met Leonard Lightfoot, a well-known collector at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, and was introduced to other collectors. The result was a story about a boy who follows clues from his grandfather's old photographs, tales, and his grandfather's last words which lead him on an adventure that takes him to a large …
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a contemporary fantasy debut novel by American author Ransom Riggs. The story is told through a combination of narrative and a mix of vernacular and found photography from the personal archives of collectors listed by the author. This young adult book was originally intended to be a picture book featuring photographs Riggs had collected, but on the advice of an editor at Quirk Books, he used the photographs as a guide from which to put together a narrative. Riggs was a collector of photographs, but needed more for his novel. He met Leonard Lightfoot, a well-known collector at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, and was introduced to other collectors. The result was a story about a boy who follows clues from his grandfather's old photographs, tales, and his grandfather's last words which lead him on an adventure that takes him to a large abandoned orphanage on Cairnholm, a fictional Welsh island.The book has been a New York Times best seller. It reached the #1 spot on the Children's Chapter Books list on April 29, 2012, after being on the list for 45 weeks, remaining there until May 20, when it dropped to the fourth spot on the list. Critics have generally praised the book for creative use of vintage photographs in the sepia style and surrealist form, as well as good characterization and settings.
Viihdyttävä nuortenkirja fantasiatarinasta, joka on kudottu aitojen vintage-kuvien ympärille, jotka ovat toden totta osittain aika eriskummallisia.
A rare book that attracted my attention on the bookstore shelves, I feared that it would end up basically being the original X-Men (teenagers with super-powers!) written by someone who doesn't really understand the genre. What I hoped it would be was a melancholy mystery of a lost and forgotten people. The hero Jacob's teenaged angst and the advent of time manipulation ensured it was much more the latter than the former: once Jacob discovered what happened to Mrs. Peregrine's school, the mystery element is over, and it turns into an exploration of the peculiar students, and the threats they face in the world.
The parallels between this book and Harry Potter are clear (though whether they're intentional is less clear), and the themes of "finding out you're special" and "finding a place where you belong" are integral to both stories, although not as well followed through here. The villains …
A rare book that attracted my attention on the bookstore shelves, I feared that it would end up basically being the original X-Men (teenagers with super-powers!) written by someone who doesn't really understand the genre. What I hoped it would be was a melancholy mystery of a lost and forgotten people. The hero Jacob's teenaged angst and the advent of time manipulation ensured it was much more the latter than the former: once Jacob discovered what happened to Mrs. Peregrine's school, the mystery element is over, and it turns into an exploration of the peculiar students, and the threats they face in the world.
The parallels between this book and Harry Potter are clear (though whether they're intentional is less clear), and the themes of "finding out you're special" and "finding a place where you belong" are integral to both stories, although not as well followed through here. The villains of the story are highly contrived, making them seem like monsters in an old comic book rather than having real menace. Overall the first half of the book is the best, and it goes downhill from there. It's the first in a series, but I'll probably stop here.
