Tuesday - First Chapter - First Paragraph - Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

Each Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea shares the first part of a book that she is reading or thinking about reading.  This week I'm sharing the first few paragraphs of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.  I have been meaning to read this book and, indeed, the whole series for quite some time.  Since the movie adaptation comes out later this month, this seems a good time.  Plus, this will fit in the R.I.P. XI venue quite nicely.  See what you think:

I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.  The first of these came as a terrible shock and, like anything that changes you forever, split my life into halves: Before and After.  Like many of the extraordinary things to come, it involved my grandfather, Abraham Portman.

Growing up, Grandpa Portman was the most fascinating person I knew.  He had lived in an orphanage, fought in wars, crossed oceans by steamship and deserts on horseback, performed in circuses, knew everything about guns and self-defense and surviving in the wilderness, and spoke at least three languages that weren't English.  It all seemed unfathomably exotic to a kid who'd never left Florida, and I begged him to regale me with stories whenever I saw him.  He always obliged, telling them like secrets that could be entrusted only to me.


Blurb:

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of peculiar photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its decaying bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that Miss Peregrine’s children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

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Have you read this one?  Planning on seeing the movie?  Think the photos are beyond creepy?  The author says that this book comes out of his love for vintage photography and bizarro stories.  I'll say.