Tim Burton’s Newest “Peculiar” Movie
Albin Prelvukaj, ‘20
October 2016
On September 30th, 2016, Ransom Riggs’ book, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, hit theaters as America’s newest film. What started off as just an underrated book series became a big time, popular movie. Tim Burton, the director of the movie, succeeded in creating another creative and fantastic movie. Miss Peregrine’s starts off with Jake, the main character, following the clues to a mystery that his grandfather left behind for him to discover. What Jake doesn’t realize is that this “mystery” spans both different worlds, and times that lead to Jake finding a mysterious place known as Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. This mystery deepens as Jake learns more about the people living in the home, and their strange “powers.” Jake isn’t the only new arrival though - Miss Peregrine’s Home has very dangerous foes who are looking to capture Miss Peregrine, and kill everyone else. Soon enough, Jake finds out that only he and his peculiarity can stop the enemies, and save his new friends.
Ransom Riggs’ book series consists of three books; Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Hollow City, and Library of Souls. You’d be surprised to hear that a set of photographs that Riggs found were what sparked the idea for the books. A New York Times article says, “Growing up in Florida, the writer Ransom Riggs was often taken by his grandmother to swap meets and secondhand shops…. ‘It was pretty torturous for an 11- or 12-year-old boy,’ Mr. Riggs said recently, ‘but I would find these boxes of old snapshots.’” The article continues talking about how eventually, Ransom became more interested in these strange photographs and started to look into them. Riggs says that it became somewhat an “obsession.” One thing lead to another and soon enough Ransom Riggs found himself writing a book based off of these odd photographs that he discovered as a child.
In case you’d like to read more about the story of these photographs, go to: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/books/ransom-riggs-is-inspired-by-vintage-snapshots.html?_r=1