Miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children - Naree Tanglertpaibul

Summery
The book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, is about a boy, Jacob who has always known there was something a little out of place, he just never quite knew what it was.  When he finally finds out, and he is afraid he has gone crazy.  He enters a time loop set in the day September 3, 1940.  The children inside are also very strange. They call themselves "peculiars" meaning they have super human abilities.  Jacob has his eye on one girl especially, her name is Emma Bloom.  Together they battle the villains of the story and learn more and more about each other's worlds.  However, there is just one problem, it is impossible for Emma to live in the real world with Jacob because she would die in just a couple of hours.  On the other hand, if Jacob chooses to live in the time loop with Emma, then he would have to leave behind his whole life and start over with his new found friends.

Love Story
There is definitely some sort of love story in this book.  The main characters, Emma Bloom and Jacob Portman meet in the time loop of the peculiar children.  Emma and Jacob know there are feelings between them right off the bat. In the beginning however, they aren't sure if the feelings are good or bad.  Jacob has always had problems being social and having friends, and now he has moved up all the way to having a girlfriend.  Emma and Jacob spend every minute of all the time that Jacob is in the time loop,together. Eventually they even work together and help to save Miss Peregrine and some of the children from the house.

Tragedy
In this story the element of tragedy is definitely shown.  The tragic love story of Emma and Jacob is present throughout the story.  Even though they are happily together, both are avoiding the fact that one of them will have to give up everything they know and start a new life with the other.  Each person keeps putting off the conversation they both know needs to be had.  Another conflict that is present in this love story is the fact that Emma has also dated Jacob's grandfather, Abe.  When Abe was younger, he too would travel into the time loop and go and see Emma.  Because of this, Jacob thought that the only reason that Emma was interested in him, was because he was the last closest thing to Abe she would ever get.  This was not true though, Emma truly did love Jacob for who he was and that would only make it harder to separate.  Although Jacob and Emma loved each other, the fact was that they lived in very different worlds and one of them would have to make a big sacrifice.

Review/Recommendation

I thought this story was very well written, the author added a lot of details and included much imagery.  The concept of the story is very different from most of the books I've ever read.  Some of the themes in the book are, seeing is believing, and don't judge a book by it's cover.  In order to believe his grandfather's stories about the children with amazing talents, Jacob had to travel all the way to the little island and see them for himself.  He also thought they were quite strange at first and wasn't sure what to think of them.  As time went on he realized they were just normal kids, and got extremely close to some of them.  I would recommend this book to teenagers around my age.  Sometimes the story is a bit confusing and all the themes and imagery can be a bit much.  I feel as if people my age might take interest and enjoy this book as much as I did.


(word count 640)