Young adult fiction has recently become a very popular genre. The book store now has an entire section for this genre and a best selling section promoting the most popular sellers. For months I saw the intriguing cover for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children on those shelves. The cover shows a young girl from the 1940’s levitating slightly over the wooded ground. I finally gave in to my curiosity and bought this book and began reading. Ransom Riggs weaves an intriguing adventure of a teenage boy facing his grandfather’s legacy of mystery. His grandfather had told him vivid stories of peculiar children that he knew while growing up in a children’s home during the early days of World War II. The grandfather would leave his home over the years under mysterious and suspicious circumstances. After the grandfather dies a violent death, the boy goes in search of answers. Accompanied by his father, the boy discovers the truth about his grandfather’s childhood and has to make some difficult decisions about his own future.

Riggs develops an entertaining group of children with peculiar talents. This would have been more fun if the impending doom didn’t loom over the story at all times. The open ending promises more to the story. Reading the young adult novel as an older adult reminds me of the time when the future was full of intrigue and promise, as well as uncertainty that can be frightening. Riggs balances the boys story with the story of the children in a way that is believable and intriguing. You cheer for the children to persevere over the circumstances of time and place, all the while suspending the truth of reality.