Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Study

Guide
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, published in 2011, is the first YA
novel published by author Ransom Riggs. The story's premise of a boy using photos to
investigate the mystery surrounding his grandfather's death echoes the author's own journey to
compose the story. Riggs, a photo collector himself, wanted to publish his collection and decided
to do so by way of a novel. The pictures are featured in the book.

The book tells the story of a young boy seeking to know more about his family tragedy. Through
his grandfather's past, he discovers Miss Peregrine's home. A beautiful girl helps him to travel
back in time to learn more from Peregrine herself. The story features mysterious magic, phantoms,
and unknown monsters, one of which was allegedly responsible for his grandfather's death.

The book was highly reviewed, spending time on the New York Times Best Seller List.
It also reached #1 on the Children's Chapter Books List in 2012. The book's high praise seems to
be due to the eccentricity of the story, the photos, and the way Riggs explores themes of death and
growth in an unknown and challenging world.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Summary

Sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman grew up listening to his grandfather tell him stories of living on
an island in a children's home where each child had a supernatural ability of some sort. As he got
older, he began to dismiss these as fiction, but still retained his close relationship with his
grandfather, who seemed to be getting more senile by the day as he talked of monsters waiting to
attack him. One day Grandpa Portman is killed by a mysterious creature in the woods, and
Jacob sets out on a mission to uncover the meaning behind his cryptic last words and learn at last
about his grandfather's veiled past.

His search takes him and his father to Cairholm, a sparsely populated island in Wales where the
children's home that his grandfather grew up in is located. While his father studies the bird species
on the island, Jacob hikes through the woods and bog to the house, but finds that it is completely
dilapidated and abandoned. The locals tell him stories of the German bombs that wiped the place
out and killed all the inhabitants on September 3, 1940, leaving Jacob's grandfather as the only
survivor. To Jacob, this does not make sense because he found a letter from Headmistress Alma
Peregrine to his grandfather dated only fifteen years before. He wonders if Miss
Peregrine had not died after all, or if someone took on her identity in the letter.
Determined to find some final shred of the truth, Jacob goes back to the abandoned house one last
time and finds a trunk of old photographs identical to the ones his grandfather used to show him,
of children doing strange things like levitating or holding fire. As he looks at the photos, he
notices that there are six children watching him, asking if he is Abe, his grandfather's name. He
chases them through an old stone cairn into a world that is almost identical to the one that he just
left but different in one major way: it is September 3, 1940, and he has somehow traveled back in
time.

Two of the children he was chasing capture him—Millard, an invisible boy, and Emma, a
girl who can make fire in her hands. They take him back to the children's home, which is no
longer abandoned but crawling with children who have all sorts of "peculiarities," or supernatural
traits and abilities. They introduce him to Miss Peregrine, the matriarch who watches over the
children and runs the house. After deducing that Jacob is indeed Abe's grandson, she explains as
much as she can. They are all peculiar humans, or syndrigasti, born with these traits that
distinguish them from common folk. She is a special kind of syndrigast called an ymbryne, who
can turn into a bird and has the ability to manipulate time. She has set up a time loop for her
peculiar children to live in - the day September 3, 1940 repeats indefinitely. The loop resets and
begins again just as the German bombs are about to strike the island. Many such time loops exist
around the world, all presided over by ymbrynes.

Jacob feels at home in the time loop right away and returns daily, getting back and forth from his
own time through the old cairn. He develops a relationship with Emma, but it is complicated by
the fact that Emma was his grandfather's sweetheart back before Abe left the loop for good. As
time goes on, Miss Peregrine and the children at last tell Jacob the grim truth about their kind:
they are constantly hunted by hollowgasts, which are the monstrous remains of peculiar folk who
once tried to use time loops to make themselves immortal. Hollowgasts are served by wights,
which are hollows that have eaten enough peculiar people to revert back to some semblance of
their human form.

One day Miss Avocet, an ymbryne friend of Miss Peregrine, shows up and warns them that
the hollows and wights have set out to kidnap ymbrynes, and she herself only just escaped. When
Jacob tells Miss Peregrine about a strange new birdwatcher on the island, she worries that a wight
may have followed Jacob to the island. She also tells Jacob at last that he himself is peculiar: he is
able to see hollows, just like his grandfather, and this in itself is a rare ability because no one else
can.

The danger escalates when, in Jacob's own time, they find the town's museum curator murdered,
and Miss Peregrine tells Jacob that he must make a choice: stay in the loop with them, or leave
and never return, for fear of jeopardizing the peculiar children's safety by leading a wight there.
Instead, he sneaks out with Emma and some of the other children to try and stop the hollow before
it gets to them. They use one of the children's abilities to raise the curator from the dead and ask
what killed him. As soon as this is done, the wight who has been tracking them appears, and
reveals that he has been taking on different personas in Jacob's life for years and years to watch
him: most recently, his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Golan.
The wight disappears and the children fight his hollow companion. Jacob successfully kills the
hollow, but they realize that the wight has gone into the loop and kidnapped Miss Peregrine and
Miss Avocet in their bird forms. The children pursue the wight and learn that he has plans to
restart the immortality experiment, which is why they are kidnapping ymbrynes. Jacob shoots the
wight with his own gun, but not before he throws the cage containing the birds into the ocean,
which is taken by wights who have commandeered a German U-Boat. The children manage to
rescue Miss Peregrine, but Miss Avocet is lost.

Due to the damage the wight did to her, Miss Peregrine is stuck in her bird form and the loop has
not reset. The house has been bombed and it has progressed to September 4, 1940 for the first
time. Jacob and the other children decide they must go in search of the wights in order to stop the
terrible things that would happen to the world due to their immortality experiment. Jacob returns
to his own time once more to tell his father that he is leaving, and brings his peculiar friends as
proof that everything Grandpa Portman used to tell him was the truth. Then, he and the children
sail away from the island, using a map of all existing time loops as their only guide.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Summary

and Analysis of Chapters 2-3

Summary
Following his grandfather’s death, Jacob cycles through offices and hospitals as his parents try
to figure out what is wrong with him. He has recurring nightmares about the monster he saw, and
eventually he stops leaving the house, believing this is the only place he is safe. He blames
himself for what happened, wishing he had believed his grandfather about the monsters. Everyone
thinks he is insane, including the police, because he keeps talking about the monster he saw—
however, he knows it was real.

Even Ricky does not believe him, swearing he did not see any creature. The two get into a big
fight, which appears to end their friendship. The police conclude that a pack of wild dogs
killed Grandpa Portman. Jacob’s parents send him to a psychiatrist, Dr. Golan, who
convinces him that the creature he saw was a product of his imagination, a result of the trauma of
his grandfather’s death. He still suffers nightmares, and Dr. Golan keeps writing him
prescriptions. The medication makes him out of shape and miserable.

Dr. Golan asks if Jacob has any ideas what his grandfather’s last words might mean. Jacob has
tried to figure it out with no luck. His parents decide to sell his grandfather’s house. He is enlisted
to help clear it out, but his father becomes angered when he wants to keep all of Grandpa
Portman’s old things. He locks himself in his grandfather’s bedroom, and that’s where he finds a
box full of photos of the peculiar children Grandpa Portman used to talk about. They look so
obviously fake that Jacob is sure his grandfather’s last words meant nothing.

His parents throw him a surprise sixteenth birthday party, much to his dismay. Ricky shows up,
and the two pretend to be friends again for a while. He opens presents, and his Aunt Suzie gives
him one from his grandfather. It is the collected works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Jacob’s
name written in the cover.

Inside it, he finds the letter his grandfather meant him to read. It is addressed to his grandfather
with the affectionate nickname “Abe,” from “Headmistress Alma Lefay Peregrine,” telling him
everyone on the island misses him and wants him to send a recent picture of himself. He puts two
and two together and realizes that Headmistress Peregrine is “the bird” his grandfather wanted him
to find, since a peregrine is a kind of hawk. He knows he needs to go to this island in Wales and
try to find her.

He convinces his parents to let him spend three weeks in Cairnholm, Wales that summer to look
into his grandfather’s past, primarily because his father is a bird watcher and will accompany him
to research the bird species on the island for a new book he hopes to write. In preparation for the
trip, he attempts to call the only phone on the whole island, but is met only with an angry voice
shouting, “Piss hole!”

They finally make their way to Wales. On the ferry ride to the island, the ferryman tells them
about all the shipwrecks in the area, sunk by German U-Boats during the war. When they reach
the little town, a local points them to Priest Hole, the one place with rooms to rent on the island.
He also warns them against going out to the old abandoned children’s home alone.

They devote the next day to scouting out the island, but when his father wants to stop for a while
at a particular spot to watch birds, Jacob goes back to town to find someone to take him to the
abandoned house. He asks Kev, the owner of Priest Hole, and Kev sends the
fishmonger, Dylan, with him, along with his friend Worm. They trick him by pretending that
a shed full of animal dung is the house, and then refuse to go any farther, leaving him to continue
on alone.

Jacob finds the house, an abandoned, eerie wasteland of a place. He hopes he will find Miss
Peregrine still there, but doubts it. He explores it, finding scattered, old children’s toys and
dilapidated rooms, and realizes that it is impossible that anyone still lives there. He leaves the
house feeling further than ever from the truth.

Analysis
Chapter 2 is the first chapter that takes place fully in the “After” period of Jacob’s life, and he is
more of a loner than ever. He is isolated from everyone around him because they all believe he is
crazy, unwilling to listen to him and eager to close the case of Grandpa Portman’s death once and
for all. His only friend, Ricky, pushes away from him, also reluctant to associate with Jacob while
he is in this state. Completely alone now, Jacob has to focus all his energy on figuring out what his
grandfather wanted him to know.

The aftermath of his therapy proves the power of the mind. Jacob is able to
convince himself that he was imagining things and that there are no monsters after a session
with Dr. Golan, even though he saw the creature in the woods with his own eyes. Everyone wants
so much for him to believe it is not real that he is able to do it, at least for a little while.

His relationship with his parents, though never particularly strong, becomes even more strained in
the wake of his grandfather’s death. His parents care very much about appearances, and put Jacob
in therapy not because they care particularly about his mental state, but because they care about
what others think about them and their “crazy” son. Jacob is also at odds with his father over his
attachment to Grandpa Portman, likely because of the difference between Grandpa Portman’s
relationship with his grandson versus with his own son.

In these chapters, another mysterious figure enters the story: Miss Peregrine. Right now, the letter
is all Jacob has of her, but it is enough to send him looking for her in the flesh. If Miss Peregrine is
alive, she will be able to speak when Grandpa Portman cannot. She is Jacob’s clue into his
deceased grandfather’s past, so he is determined to find her.

Jacob begins his journey to Cairnholm in Chapter 3. Whenever a character travels to someplace
new, it is a sure sign that he/she will undergo a transformation in some way. In a new place like
Cairnholm, Jacob will be able to shed all of the burdens he carried back home and develop a new
identity away from his past. He is free to become whoever he wants, and in the process of
discovering the truth about his grandfather, he will undoubtedly change himself.

The abandoned children’s home itself is a physical representation of Jacob’s deceased grandfather.
Just like Grandpa Portman, the house is full of secrets and stories it is no longer able to tell. The
house has left clues, just like his grandfather, but right now Jacob is unable to find them. He must
work harder to unravel the truth and learn what it is that both Grandpa Portman and this
abandoned house wanted to tell him.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Summary

and Analysis of Chapters 4-5

Summary
Jacob heads back to the Priest Hole and tells his father about the trashed house, leaving out the
part about being alone when he went there. They talk about how Jacob does not yet have a better
idea of his grandfather, and his father says he gave up trying to understand him a long time ago.
He says Grandpa Portman did not know how to be a father, so he dealt with it by being
absent from his son’s life. He also says that Grandpa Portman kept too many secrets, and that he
believed he was seeing another woman because of a letter he received that Jacob’s father and aunt
found. Jacob insists that his father is wrong about Grandpa Portman, and that he is going to prove
it.

Jacob goes to the island’s small museum, hoping to talk to the curator about the history of the
abandoned house. He stops to look at the exhibits, and sees a grotesque looking blackened corpse
inside one of the cases. The museum curator, Martin Pagett, shows up, and explains that this is
the Cairnholm Man, or the Old Man, a 2700-year-old corpse that was found in an archaeological
dig on the island. They found his body in the bog.
Jacob asks Martin about the house, and he tells him that all the people who lived in the house died
a long time ago in the war in a German air raid. Jacob insists that that cannot be right, since the
letter from Miss Peregrine was dated much later than that. Martin takes Jacob to speak with
his Uncle Oggie, an 83-year-old man who has lived in the area his whole life.

Uncle Oggie talks about seeing the children from the house come into town sometimes to buy
groceries, but remembers that they always kept to themselves. He remembers the exact day when
the island was bombed and the house was destroyed—September 3, 1940, the exact date that
Grandpa Portman muttered as he was dying. He said there was one survivor, a young man who
wandered into town unscathed after the bombing and said he wanted to go to the mainland and
join the war. Jacob realizes that was his grandfather. He tells his father what he learned later, and
they realize that Grandpa Portman was likely not affectionate with his son and daughter because
he was afraid of losing his family a second time.

Jacob wonders if the letter from Miss Peregrine from fifteen years ago was actually from the
woman his grandfather was cheating with, disguising her identity. He falls asleep that night and
wakes up to a large bird in his room, staring him down, and his father labels it a peregrine falcon.
Perturbed but sure it is a coincidence, he makes the decision to head to the abandoned house one
more time to search for any information he can find.

He makes it to the house in a downpour of rain, and chooses to go upstairs to explore first. The
rooms look almost as if the children had just left them, with forgotten toys lying everywhere,
collecting dust. He finds what must have been Miss Peregrine’s room. In it is a locked trunk. He
tries many times to open it, and finally decides to push it over the upstairs railing and let gravity
do the work. It smashes straight through the floorboards to the basement, and in it he finds dozens
of photographs, all very similar to his grandfather’s old photos. He realizes that those photos must
have come from this trunk, from this house.

As he is looking at them, he hears a loud crash somewhere above him in the house, and a girl’s
voice says softly, “Abe? Is that you?” Afraid and startled, Jacob stares upward through the hole in
the basement ceiling and sees six kids staring down at him. He realizes that they are the children
from the photographs. He wants to introduce himself, but he cannot find his voice, and the
children, scared, scatter.

He chases the girl for a while and tries to tell her that he is Abe’s grandson, but she keeps running
to a mound of stones that Jacob recognizes as a cairn, one of the Neolithic tombs for which
Cairnholm was named. He follows her inside of it, but cannot find her once he enters. He tries to
figure out what just happened, wondering if this was a hallucination, since the kids were supposed
to have died a long time ago.

He decides it is time to stop this and go home, so he leaves the cairn, startled to find that there is
no rain in sight and the bog is bathed in sunlight. He walks back into town, but realizes that town
is different: there are horse carriages instead of tractors, the buzz of diesel generators is gone, and
everyone is staring at him. He goes to the Priest Hole, but the people do not recognize him. They
believe he is a German spy, and chase him away.

Jacob tries to figure out whether he is in the middle of a psychotic episode when suddenly the girl
he was chasing appears, grabbing him and demanding to know who he is. He explains that
Abraham Portman was his grandfather, but she does not believe it. He shows her Miss Peregrine’s
letter to prove it, but she still denies it and seems to think he is some kind of monster. Jacob sees a
calendar and realizes that it is September 3, 1940. He remembers his grandfather telling him “On
the other side of the old man’s grave,” and realizes that he was talking about the cairn. He had
gone into the cairn and come out in another time. His knees give out and he faints.

He awakes to the girl and another boy having a conversation over him, arguing about who he is.
The boy is invisible, and introduces himself as Millard Nullings. He says the girl’s name
is Emma. They run back through town with him, and talk about being from a “loop.” They keep
accusing Jacob of being a “wight,” but he has no idea what is going on. Emma calls him her
prisoner, and tells him to keep quiet as they ride in a wagon out of town.

Analysis
Up until this point, Jacob has been lost in a wave of confusion, attempting to piece together
eclectic, sparse clues that oftentimes contradict one another. It is only in these chapters that the
mystery begins to click, and he discovers the cryptic meaning of his grandfather’s last words by
literally stumbling into the world Grandpa Portman once inhabited.

Jacob has always looked up to his grandfather as an idol who had overcome so much hardship in
life to become a good man. This is why it hurts him to imagine that his father’s accusations of
Grandpa Portman cheating on Jacob’s grandmother are true. This would diminish Jacob’s vision
of his hero as an honest, trustworthy man, tainting him with secrets, lies, and adultery.

The photographs that repeatedly appear in this book are paradoxical, in that they do not provide
Jacob with what photos are meant to provide. A photograph should be a hard, honest depiction of
an event, presenting irrefutable evidence and telling an important story. However, Jacob does not
trust the photographs he finds, believing them to be manipulated. Rather than helping him solve
the mystery of his grandfather’s past, finding the trunk full of Miss Peregrine’s photos leaves him
even more confused.

Much of this mistrust occurs because Jacob has been trained to doubt himself and the things he
sees and experiences by the people around him. His parents constantly insisted that there was
something wrong with him that needed to be fixed, and his therapist, Dr. Golan, managed to
convince Jacob himself that this was true and his mind was broken in some way. As a result, he no
longer trusts what he sees with his own eyes. He repeatedly believes he is hallucinating as he
moves through the world of 1940, doubting his perceptions of what is occurring. This trait is one
of Jacob’s primary weaknesses, and it repeatedly impedes his ability to solve the mystery he sets
out to solve.

The theme of time is important throughout the entire novel, but begins to come into play
especially in these chapters. This novel shatters common perceptions of time as a linear, fixed
entity, painting it instead as something fluid. That Jacob can travel back in time to the day the
children’s home was bombed suggests that multiple iterations of time can exist at once—however,
Jacob has not yet learned how that is possible.

Chapter 5 pivots from the previous set of chapters, which have been slow and predictable as Jacob
slowly finds his footing on the island. This chapter is an onslaught of confusion, presenting many
new characters and introducing new mysteries to be solved. Readers are meant to feel as perplexed
as Jacob as they confront this entirely new situation, and this keeps the pages turning.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Summary

and Analysis of Chapters 6-7

Summary
Jacob walks through the woods with the invisible boy, Millard, and Emma, who can
somehow conjure fire in her hands. They finally reach the children's home, but it is now beautiful
instead of broken and abandoned. He sees lots of other children, many of whom he recognizes
from all the photographs. Everything is exactly as his grandfather described in the stories, and the
children are clearly magical, each with some special ability. Millard calls them "peculiar."

Jacob is taken inside to meet the headmistress, Miss Peregrine. He recognizes her

immediately from the photos. She tells Jacob that she has been watching him in her alternate form
—a peregrine falcon. She is surprised at how little Jacob knows about them, how little Grandpa
Portman actually told him. Miss Peregrine deduces that Grandpa Portman is dead, and Jacob
explains how he died. She is angry and upset, remembering how she warned him not to leave the
island. It is revealed that Emma had been eavesdropping on their conversation, and she is
distraught, having been Grandpa Portman's sweetheart when they both lived here.

Miss Peregrine then tries to answer as many of Jacob's questions as she can. She explains the
difference between coerlfolc, or common people, and the hidden syndrigast, or peculiar
spirit. There are peculiars all over the world, but they must live in hiding, since common people
often believe them to be dangerous witches, ghosts, or shapeshifters. A special kind of peculiar, a
bird shapeshifter called an ymbryne has the ability to manipulate time—Miss Peregrine is one
of these. Ymbrynes set up isolated enclaves as safe places for peculiar children, creating temporal
loops where time remains on one day so that peculiar folk can live indefinitely. Jacob remembers
his grandfather's words: "Find the bird, in the loop."

This loop is stuck on September 3, 1940. The peculiars were on Cairnholm for ten years before
this date, but they did not need isolation until then, because if they had not entered a loop then
they would have been bombed and killed. Miss Peregrine recounts the other ymbrynes and their
loops, particularly Miss Finch and Miss Avocet. Miss Avocet and Miss
Bunting teach an academy for ymbynes that Miss Peregrine once attended. She explains that
only women can be ymbrynes because men lack the seriousness required of such responsibility.

Miss Peregrine invites Jacob to stay for dinner, and he does. She introduces him to the other
children as Abraham's grandson Jacob, but does not tell them that Abe is dead. Jacob watches all
the children's peculiar eating habits - one girl, Claire, has a mouth on the back of her head. The
children ask Jacob a lot of questions about the future, and they are a bit disappointed when they
learn it is not as grand as they excepted it to be. The kids all tell Jacob that they are all around
seventy and eighty years old, having been in this loop for around seventy years.

Suddenly there are booms outside; it is the Germans, come to bomb them. Jacob is afraid, but the
kids laugh and say it is merely the changeover, when the loop resets to the beginning of the day.
They take him outside to seek it, and it looks like a fireworks display. Jacob watches the bomb fall
and it freezes just before it hits, and then everything goes white and the bomb disappears. Emma
escorts Jacob home for the night back through the cairn, and apologizes for the way she treated
him earlier. His father is angry at him for spending so much time alone at the abandoned house,
and makes him speak on the phone to his psychiatrist, who tells his father to give him some
breathing room.

Jacob heads back to the loop the next morning, lying to his father that he met some people from
the other side of the island there and would be hanging out with them. Emma is waiting at the bog
for him, and they make it through the cairn and into the loop just in time for a performance the
children are putting on about their abilities. Jacob learns about their peculiarities in this way.
Millard is invisible, Olive can levitate, Emma can make fire and swallow it, Bronwyn has
superhuman strength, Hugh has bees living in his mouth, and Fiona can instantly grow plants
and flowers. They used to perform this show and travel around the world, making money by
pretending their abilities were just magic show acts.

After the show, the kids walk through town to get to the harbor to go swimming. One
child, Horace, wears a suit and tailcoat there, as he does everywhere he goes—his peculiarity is
his prophetic dreams. Walking through town, Jacob is perturbed to notice the same things he saw
the day before. Millard says he is compiling an account of the day in the loop experienced by
every single human and animal resident of Cairnholm, and has spent twenty-seven years on this
already. They go swimming, and then Jacob tells them all about the world in the future. They are
amazed by his accounts of the technology and lifestyle in the present. As they head back to the
house, Emma flirts a bit with Jacob, and he invites her over into his world for a day. Miss
Peregrine would never let her over for that long, so instead she comes through the cairn for one
minute so she and Jacob can take pictures on his cell phone together.

Jacob makes it back into town and runs into his father, who tells him that something happened and
they need to get back quickly. The people at the pub are trying to figure out who killed a load of
the island's sheep, and they interrogate Jacob about where he was. He comes up with a quick
excuse and says the friends he told his father about are imaginary, and he was actually alone all
day. Eventually Jacob convinces them that it was not him, and they show Jacob and his father the
dead sheep, killed with clean knife cuts and covered in blood. People eventually start to think it
was Worm and Dylan, but Jacob does not think it was them. His father gets angry at him for
lying about meeting up with friends, and then Jacob goes to bed thinking about Emma.

Analysis
This novel works through the world-within-a-world model of fantasy literature, and this begins to
come to light in these chapters. Jacob, the protagonist, is from the world we recognize, and has
lived his entire life without knowledge of the fantastical part of the world that exists alongside it.
Fantasy novels like this one operate on the idea that everything is not what it seems. In these
chapters, Jacob learns for the first time that his grandfather's stories really were true and that this
peculiar world has existed alongside his own all along.

At last Jacob meets Miss Peregrine, the figure that all his grandfather's clues have been leading up
to. Up until this point, readers have had to form their own preconceptions of her character. Within
one conversation with her, however, much of her characterization is revealed. Miss Peregrine
serves two important roles for these children: she is their teacher, helping them to grow and learn,
and encouraging proper discipline in all situations. But she is also a mother figure for them, in the
absence of their parents, protecting them from the evils of the outside world and comforting them
when they need it. Miss Peregrine is the backbone that holds these children together, and Jacob
learns that quickly.

Author Riggs approaches characterization in an interesting way in these chapters, because as

Jacob first meets the children, they are each characterized primarily by their peculiarity. Their
abilities are their primary character traits, and it is hard at first for Jacob to see past these and
recognize the other qualities that define them as a person. It is clear that this is a recurring problem
for peculiars; as Jacob is watching the peculiars' performance, Emma takes the time to emphasize
that even though Bronwyn is known for being strong and tough, she actually has a soft heart.
These children must work to be known for something other than just their peculiar abilities.

Jacob witnesses the "changeover," or the point when the loop resets to the beginning of the day,
and this is an important moment within the larger theme of time in this novel. This moment shows
that Miss Peregrine has the power to reverse time, and, in this peculiar way, even cheat death. At
this moment, Jacob must reevaluate many of his previous conceptions of the universe and adjust
his perspective with the knowledge that such things are possible.

Jacob's budding relationship with Emma is extremely complicated because of the way it
transcends time. Right now, it is clear that Jacob has feelings for Emma—however, it is less clear
whether Emma has feelings for Jacob, too, or whether this is just an extension of her former
feelings for his grandfather, Abe. It is possible that Emma may only attach herself so closely to
Jacob because he brings back memories of Abe. This tension between past and present will
become a significant source of conflict in their relationship later on.

Before he came to Cairnholm, Jacob was a loner with very few friends and a subpar relationship
with most of his family. In the loop, however, Jacob fits in immediately, able to instantly find his
footing and make friends with these children despite their vast differences in circumstance. In
these chapters, Jacob comes out of his shell more than readers have seen him do so in the entire
book thus far, and it is clear that he is undergoing a transformation.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Summary
and Analysis of Chapters 8-9

Summary
As soon as he goes into the loop the next morning, Jacob has a conversation with Miss
Peregrine. She warns him against discussing the future with these children from the past
because if they were to leave this loop and go to the future, they would age instantaneously and
die in a matter of hours. Later that morning Jacob meets Enoch, a boy who creates little clay
soldiers that can actually move, called homunculi. His skill is taking life from one thing and
giving it to another, and he shows Jacob the mouse heart that he put in the soldier to make it move.
He asks Jacob if he will be staying with them on the island, and then tells him that some things
here are not as great as they seem. He tells him to go upstairs to meet his friend Victor if he
wants proof.

Victor is dead, but Enoch's ability allows him to rouse him for brief talks. Enoch refuses to tell
him how Victor died, but he does tell him about Raid the Village, a game they play where they
wreak havoc on town and destroy things because the loop will reset it all the next day. Wondering
how Victor died, Jacob wanders out of his room and finds Emma's, noticing a tied-up box
marked "private." Curious, Jacob unties the string and finds nearly a hundred letters from his
grandfather. He goes through the letters and pictures that they sent each other, but then Emma
walks in, furious at him for snooping.

She says he could have just asked her if he wanted to know about her and Abe, and then tells him
how his grandfather told her he loved her and would come back for her one day, but never did,
and found another woman—Jacob's grandmother—to be with instead. Jacob realizes that it is not
him she likes; he is merely a stand-in for his grandfather. Emma moves in to kiss him, but he
cannot handle this idea so he suggests that there is something going on between her and Enoch. He
also demands to know what happened to Victor, sure that there is something going on here that no
one is telling him. She tells him to meet her later that night and she will tell him.

Jacob goes back to the future for a while and talks to his father, who is upset because another
birdwatcher has shown up on the island, which threatens his plans to write an innovative new
book about the bird species here. The birdwatcher walks into the pub, wearing dark glasses, and
immediately seems like a questionable figure. His father falls asleep immediately that night and
Jacob sneaks out to meet Emma. She throws him a snorkel mask and tells him they're going to
swim somewhere before they talk, and then she leads him to a shipwreck, where they breathe
through a tube she and the others have built that leads up to the surface. They explore for a while,
with Jacob mesmerized, before going back to the surface to sit on the ship's hull and talk.

They begin kissing, which Jacob promised himself he would not do. Emma asks him to stay there
with them, but Jacob says he cannot, because he is not like them. She tells him he must be peculiar
because common people cannot pass through time loops. She explains at last what his
grandfather's rare talent was—seeing the monsters. Jacob remembers the being that killed his
grandfather and realizes that he can see them too.

Emma continues to explain, telling Jacob that the monsters cannot enter time loops, which is why
they are safe on the island. Victor died when he got fed up with the island, tried to leave, and was
killed by monsters—she calls them "hollows." Jacob tells her that it was hollows that killed Abe
too. They sit together on the ship for a while until suddenly Hugh and Fiona appear, paddling
towards them in the water, telling them to come because something is terribly wrong.

Miss Avocet, one of Miss Peregrine's ymbryne friends, has come, looking frail and weak.
While they fix up a bed for her, Jacob gets angry at Miss Peregrine for not telling him straight
away about the monsters and his peculiarity. He also wonders why his grandfather waited so long
to tell him, and assumes he wanted to protect him. Miss Avocet comes to and says she came to
warn Miss Peregrine because a pair of wights came into her loop in the dead of night disguised as
council members. Miss Bunting, her partner in running the school, was abducted, just like
Miss Wren and Miss Treecreeper were in their own loops. They are taking ymbynes for some
reason, so Miss Peregrine must be careful and be ready.

Miss Peregrine sends all the children to bed, but Jacob forces her to sit down with him and explain
everything she knows about the monsters. She explains that some time ago, a faction of peculiars
who believed that they could use time loops to reverse aging and create immortality emerged. Her
own two brothers were in on it, and they, other members of the faction, and traitor ymbynes
conducted an experiment that ended in a terrible explosion. Everyone had assumed they were
killed, but they actually survived in the form of damned creatures called hollowgasts. No one
knows for sure how it happened, but they believe they reversed-aged themselves so far back that
their souls had not yet been conceived, so they are soulless monsters.

The only hope for some salvation for hollows is to gorge themselves on peculiar blood because a
hollow who eats enough peculiars becomes a wight, or a creature somewhere in between human
and monster. Wights are servants to hollows, scouting out peculiars for them, and their defining
feature is the lack of pupils in their eyes. Jacob remembers seeing the neighbor he thought was
blind near his grandfather's house, and realizes he was a wight. He wonders if the new birdwatcher
on the island could be a wight, Miss Peregrine is worried that a wight followed Jacob to the island,
after knowing about his grandfather.

Analysis
Throughout this novel, physical evidence has become an important source for Jacob as he tries to
piece his grandfather's story together. First it was the photographs, both the ones his grandfather
used to show him and the ones he found in the trunk in the abandoned house. But letters are
becoming important now, as well—it was the letter that he found in the Emerson book that led
Jacob to Cairnholm, and now he finds letters that tell him the story of his grandfather's
relationship with Emma. These essential objects, photographs and letters, pave the way for later
conversations that reveal the truth to Jacob at last.

The letters also confirm the conflict between Emma's past relationship with Abe and her feelings
for Jacob now. Both Emma and Jacob are in a difficult position, Emma as she battles with trying
to figure out whether she truly has feelings for Jacob himself, and Jacob as he attempts to
decide whether to act on his feelings for Emma, knowing about her past with his grandfather. This
potential relationship transcends time, and Emma and Jacob must work to understand it the same
way they must understand the fluid, complex entity that is time itself.

In these chapters, Jacob learns the last piece of the overarching mystery: there are monsters who
seek to kill peculiars, and even more, he is a peculiar himself. This realization confirms all of
Jacob's feelings of isolation and lack of belonging that he felt growing up. He
actually is different, and he has at last found the place that he fits in. This marks the moment that
he is fully accepted into this world, the safe haven that Miss Peregrine has created. This means
that when this world is threatened—as Miss Avocet reveals it has been—Jacob will fight even
harder to protect it.

Immortality is a central theme of these chapters, starting with the revelation of Enoch's skill and
the way he uses it on Victor. Though peculiars are technically mortal, they use many different
tactics to transcend their mortality. Miss Peregrine is able to create a loop to halt time at one spot,
and she cheated the inevitable death that would've befallen them when the bomb hit. Even though
Victor is technically dead, Enoch is able to take life from something else and put it into him.
Finally, the faction of traitor ymbynes and other peculiars who sought to manipulate time loops to
make them immortal also sought to beat their mortality, but they were punished for it, suggesting
that death is not something that is meant to be messed with.
A theme of greed also permeates these chapters, with characters constantly wanting what they
cannot have. Miss Peregrine warns against this sort of greed when she tells Jacob not to tell the
children about the future. She does not want them to get caught up in wanting something that they
will never have, and one of her primary teachings is contentment with the present moment. In the
same way, the peculiars who sought to manipulate time wanted something they could not have:
immortality. This novel cautions that this kind of greed can be extremely dangerous.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Summary

and Analysis of Chapters 10-11

Summary
Jacob only has a few more days to decide whether to leave his father and stay in the loop, or to
go with him back to the US. His father has been wallowing and drinking heavily, sure that his new
book is not going to work out, so it is easy for Jacob to sneak away into the loop. At the
house, Miss Peregrine has instituted what is nearly a lockdown in order to keep everyone
safe, and all of the children are stir-crazy. Miss Avocet is still there, and everyone speculates
as to why the hollows would want to kidnap ymbrynes. Jacob sees Horace make an apocalyptic
prediction one night.

Martin, the museum curator in Cairnholm, goes missing, and they later find his body in the
ocean. Jacob's father discusses running into the strange other birdwatcher the other night, wearing
sunglasses in the dark. Jacob fears that this means he is definitely a wight. There is a major storm
about to hit the island, and Jacob is instructed not to leave Priest Hole, but he sneaks out so that he
can warn Miss Peregrine about what he heard. Emma and Millard believe it was a hollow
who killed Martin. Miss Peregrine says that no one is allowed to leave the house, not even Jacob.
He puts up a fight because his father is stuck out there in town, but Miss Peregrine says if he
chooses to leave he can never return.

Jacob decides to leave anyway to try and get the hollow before it gets them, and
Emma, Bronwyn, and Enoch decide to sneak out of the loop with him. The plan is for Enoch
to rouse Martin to ask him what killed him. They make it into town and go to the fishmonger's,
where they are keeping Martin's body. Enoch rouses him with a sheep's heart, and he wakes up
and recognizes Jacob. He says "my old man" killed him, and Jacob realizes he is talking about the
bog boy that he saw in the museum when he first arrived on Cairnholm. He also realizes that
Martin is mistaken—he thought he saw the bog boy, but it was really a hollowgast, visible to the
common eye only when it is eating.

Suddenly the mysterious bird-watching man appears, and he knows about all of them. He lists
their names in turn, even Jacob's, and then reveals that he has been present in Jacob's life in many
ways for years and years. He was his old middle-school bus driver Mr. Barron, his family's lawn
and pool cleaner, and worst of all, his psychiatrist Dr.Golan. This wight has been following
Jacob around his entire life. He reveals the grotesque Malthus, his hollow, and says if Jacob
helps them, he has nothing to fear from Malthus or his kind. When Jacob refuses, Dr. Golan
disappears, leaving Malthus to eat them. They fight it and try to make an exit, and are eventually
able to because Bronwyn uses her strength to beat him.

Enoch accuses Jacob of betraying them and allowing Dr. Golan to follow him straight to them.
Bronwyn and Emma defend him. Afraid that Dr. Golan has figured out how to get into the loop on
his own, they run towards the loop in the woods, with the hollowgast pursuing them. Bronwyn and
Enoch run ahead while Emma and Jacob veer off to try and lead the hollow away. They hide in the
shack full of sheep manure, and the sheep themselves are inside it sheltering from the rain. Jacob
tells Emma that if they make it through this he is staying with her, but then the hollow enters the
shack and begins to eat the sheep. They run and make it to the cairn, and Jacob buries garden
shears in the hollow's eyes and watches it die.

They go into the loop and to the house, only to learn from Bronwyn and Enoch that the wight
made it in and captured Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet as birds and took them away. The kids
are in chaos; Jacob says they have to do something, so they run to where the wight tried to escape
the island in a boat. The tide got too rough, so Dr. Golan and the ymbrynes stopped on the
lighthouse rock - and are still there. Emma, Bronwyn, Millard, and Jacob decide to swim across to
them, but Dr. Golan begins to shoot. Millard gets shot and is badly injured. Bronwyn rips the
metal door off the shipwreck they are sheltering in to use it as a shield to get Millard and the rest
of the group to the lighthouse, which is the closest land.

At the lighthouse, Bronwyn hits Dr. Golan with the door and knocks the wind out of him, and
Jacob and Emma pursue him while Bronwyn makes a tourniquet for Millard. They trap him at the
top of the lighthouse, and he threatens to throw the cage with the ymbrynes in it over the side. He
reveals that they need the ymbrynes to finish the experiment they started and become immortal.
He throws the birdcage over into the ocean, and Jacob summons up the courage to pull the trigger
and shoot Dr. Golan with his own gun. Once he is dead, they head out immediately to try and
retrieve the birdcage from the ocean.

As they are pursuing the cage, a German U-Boat appears, manned by wights. One bird has
escaped the cage—Miss Peregrine—but the wight takes Miss Avocet and the U-boat disappears.
The group makes it back to shore with Miss Peregrine. Millard is badly injured, and they realize
that the loop has not reset. Miss Peregrine is unable to turn back into a human. Because the loop
did not reset, the house has been bombed and is in shambles. They realize the hollows and wights
will soon come back for Miss Peregrine, and they know they need to pursue them and put a stop to
their plan. Horace has a vision and draws a picture of where they are going, but it is vague and
uninformative.

Emma locates something called the Map of Days, which is labeled with every loop ever known to
exist. Millard explains to Jacob a concept called leapfrogging, where you travel to a loop and then
have access to all other loops that existed at that time, even if they have ceased to exist in the
present day. Through this method, you can travel through time. They are worried that the wights
have taken the ymbrynes leapfrogging to a place that existed in the past, so they not only have to
figure out where they are, but when too.

Jacob decides to abandon his former life and come with them to find them. He goes back to town
in his own time and tries to explain to his father what happened. His father does not believe
anything he says, and thinks Jacob is crazy until Jacob's friends appear. Emma shows them her
flame hands, and Olive levitates, while Millard is invisible. Jacob tells his father he is going on
a trip and will not be back for a while, and his father says he is just like his grandfather. He goes
back to sleep, and they leave him a photo of Emma and Grandpa Portman as proof that the
Emma he just saw was real. Emma also writes him a letter.

They go back to what had once been the loop—it is now September 4 for the first time. They
bury Victor, and prepare three rowboats to set off and leave the island in. The ten children, with
Miss Peregrine in her cage, set out on their next journey.

Analysis
Jacob is given the choice to be part of the peculiar world, where he feels like he truly belongs, or
to remain in the common world he has always known. The fact that this choice is difficult to make
and that he considers the safety of his family shows that he has gained maturity over the course of
this novel. He must choose between helping the people he has come to love in the loop and
returning to the apparent comfort of his old life, leaving them to meet whatever fate befalls them.
In the end, he makes the mature choice to help his friends who need him, while still ensuring that
his father knows he is gone and will be okay on his own.

Miss Peregrine's role as a mother to her wards truly comes out in Chapter 10 as she attempts to
secure the loop and ensure their safety. She puts the children of the house above everything else,
and though she does care about Jacob, she will not allow him to jeopardize their safety. The chaos
that ensues after Miss Peregrine disappears clearly shows that she was the glue that held the house
together—however, she has also trained and guided these children well, and the way they rise to
the occasion and try to rescue her rather than simply wallowing in sorrow shows that her fighting,
determined spirit has made an impression on them.

Jacob is extremely perturbed to find out that this wight has been following him around his whole
life. Things that were familiar—his bus driver, his neighbors—have now been corrupted, which is
uncomfortable for him to think about. The knowledge that Dr. Golan was this wight all along is
especially perturbing, since this is not only a betrayal of Jacob himself but of his mind. Dr.
Golan messed with his mind and made him believe he was crazy, all for his own gain. When he
learns this, Jacob realizes that not even his mind is safe from these monsters.

While Jacob certainly proves himself a hero when he kills Dr. Golan and leads the children to
rescue the ymbrynes, he certainly does not do it all alone. The other children in the house all prove
their worth and show that their abilities are not just peculiar, but also useful. They can use their
skills for good, and they do. Bronwyn uses her strength to rescue them from the hollow, Emma
uses her fire as a weapon against Dr. Golan, and Millard is even nearly killed attempting to use his
invisibility to get them across the water. They are all heroes, and their effort as a team was
essential in stopping Dr. Golan.

The loop's failure to reset is a symbolic loss of innocence for the peculiar children who lived in it.
While inside the loop, they were able to hold onto their childhood both physically and
emotionally, ignoring the outside world and under the constant protection of Miss Peregrine. The
loop's failure means that Miss Peregrine can no longer protect them from the rest of the world, and
they must grow up and face its evils, however awful they may be.

The theme of the fluidity of time continues as Jacob and the peculiar children realize what they
must do in order to rescue the ymbrynes and stop the wights and hollows from destroying the
world on their quest to become immortal. These different times—these loops—all exist at once,
and the children must use their skills to move through all of these times and accomplish their
mission. Time is powerful, but it can be manipulated by humans, so the children must counter-
manipulate it to ensure that the natural order of things is not disrupted. It is a tall task, but one that
they have proven themselves ready for.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Character

List
Jacob
This young boy is saddened by the strange death of his grandfather. With signs pointing to the
supernatural, he travels to the children's home which housed his grandfather when he was young.
Emma
This young girl finds Jacob and serves as a sidekick in his adventures. She is the one who lets him
into the time loop and later helps Jacob with his hunt for the hollowgast. She's described by Jacob
as being "strikingly beautiful." Her peculiarity is the ability to spout flames from her hands.
Miss Peregrine
This woman runs an orphanage for children called peculiars who each have a unique power. For
instance, one child is invisible and another has superhuman strength. She herself is a shapeshifter
who can become a bird. The novel's final conflict arises when she is kidnapped and kept in her
bird form.
Grandpa Portman
Abe Portman is Jacob's grandfather, who grew up in the children's home on the island of
Cairnholm under the supervision of Miss Peregrine. While in the home, he developed a
relationship with Emma Bloom. Abe left the island and fought in the army, eventually moving to
America and starting a new family. He dies at the very beginning of the novel, but leaves Jacob
with the information he needs to find Miss Peregrine and her time loop on Cairnholm.
Franklin Portman
Son of Abe and father of Jacob, he is an avid birdwatcher and aspiring author, but cannot seem to
finish a book and get published. He accompanies Jacob to Cairnholm to study the bird species
there.
Maryann Portman
Jacob's mother, she loves her son but believes he is mentally ill after his stories of seeing a strange
monster kill his grandfather.
Dr. Golan
Jacob's psychiatrist, he turns out to be a wight that has been following Jacob his entire life, hoping
to be led to Cairnholm.
Millard
One of the peculiar children, he has the power of invisibility.
Enoch
One of the peculiar children, he has the ability to take life from one source and put it into another.
He is able to raise the dead to speak with them by using the life from another animal's heart.
Ricky
Jacob's only friend before traveling to Cairnholm, Ricky and Jacob develop a friendship based on
mutual need. Jacob helps Ricky pass English, while Ricky ensures that Jacob is not tormented by
bullies at school.
Miss Avocet
One of Miss Peregrine's ymbryne friends, she escapes kidnapping by wights and comes to warn
Miss Peregrine about the danger.
Bronwyn
One of the peculiar children, she possesses superhuman strength.
Fiona
One of the peculiar children, she is wild-looking and has the ability to make all kinds of plants
grow with her mind.
Olive
One of the peculiar children, she has the ability to float on air. She must wear leaden shoes to keep
herself on the ground.
Claire
A peculiar child, she has a mouth on the back of her head.
Hugh
One of the peculiar children, he has a colony of bees living inside his mouth.
Horace
One of the peculiar children, he has prophetic dreams about the future.
Kev
The owner of Priest Hole, he frequently interacts with Jacob and his father during their time on the
island.
Dylan
The fishmonger in the town of Cairnholm, he is the first person to take Jacob anywhere near the
abandoned house.
Worm
Dylan's friend, he also comes along to show Jacob how to get to the house.
Martin
He is the museum curator in the town of Cairnholm, who is later killed by a hollowgast.
Oggie
Martin's eighty-year-old uncle, he was alive at the time when the peculiar children still inhabited
the house before their loop. He tells Jacob the story of how the house was bombed.
Miss Finch
She is one of Miss Peregrine's ymbryne friends.
Miss Bunting
She is Miss Avocett's ymbryne partner in teaching the academy for ymbrynes where Miss
Peregrine herself attended. Miss Bunting is captured by wights toward the end of the novel.
Victor
Bronwyn's brother and one of the peculiar children, he was killed by a hollow. Enoch often rouses
Victor with his ability so that they can speak with him.
Malthus
Dr. Golan's hollow companion, he kills Martin and eventually is killed by Jacob.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Symbols,

Allegory and Motifs
The House
The house is a symbol of protection for the children, guarding them the same way Miss Peregrine
herself does. In Jacob's time, it also represents the past and all the secrets his grandfather has
concealed from him. The house means many things to these children, which is why it is so
devastating when the loop does not reset and the house gets destroyed by bombs.
The Apple
Before their first kiss, Emma picks an apple and gives it to Jacob while still inside the loop. The
next morning, back in his own time, Jacob notices that the apple has completely aged and
shriveled up. This apple is a symbol for the peculiar children themselves, as it is subject to the
same forces that would rapidly age a peculiar child from the loop who spent too much time in the
present. It is a reminder of the fragility of time and the consequences that result from shifting and
bending it.
The Cairnholm Man
Early on in his stay at Cairnholm, Jacob comes upon the preserved, ancient body that the people of
Cairnholm found in the bog. This corpse is a strong symbol for the past, which, as Jacob soon
learns, is always present in Cairnholm.
Birds
Birds are a recurring motif in this story, both through Jacob's father's fascination with
birdwatching and through the ymbrynes themselves, who are bird shapeshifters. Birds are given
enormous power in this novel, as Miss Peregrine says that all birds—not just ymbrynes—have the
power to manipulate time.
The Cairn
The cairn stands at the literal border between past and present, guarding the loop and its children
of the past from the prying eyes of the people of the present. The cairn is also where they
discovered the body of the bog boy, another prominent entity from the past that has found a place
in the present. Thus, the cairn represents the dual world that Jacob has found himself in while on
Cairnholm island.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Metaphors and Similes
Abandoned House (Simile)
"Trees burst forth from broken windows and skins of scabrous
vine gnawed at the walls like antibodies attacking a virus." (55)
This simile creates an air of hostility around the abandoned house. This is unexpected for Jacob,
who believed he would find someone living in the house to give him answers. Instead, though, he
finds a monstrous, decrepit building with more secrets than he thinks he can ever uncover.
Sound of Rain (Simile)
"For a long moment there was only the sound of rain banking off
the roof, like a thousand fingers tapping way off somewhere." (80)
This simile heightens the suspense that Jacob feels after he hears the children who are watching
him sift through the trunk full of photographs. This is a tense moment because Jacob had
previously believed that no one was living in this house and it is extremely strange for him to see
the people in the photographs come to life before him.
Emma Carrying Fire (Simile)
"She held it before her like a waiter carrying a tray, lighting the
path and casting our twin shadows across the trees." (116)
Jacob compares Emma carrying fire in her hands to a waiter carrying a tray in order to emphasize
how effortlessly she does this seemingly impossible action. It also highlights Emma's calm, self-
assured nature, something that Jacob admires about her.
Miss Avocet's Hands (Simile)
"Miss Avocet looked helplessly at her hands, trembling in her lap
like a broken-winged bird." (169)
This simile compares Miss Avocet's trembling hands to a feeble, frail bird, a fitting comparison
because she is an ymbryne, who can shapeshift into a bird. These birdlike qualities are a part of an
ymbryne's identity even when she is in her human form.
The Cairn (Simile)
"When we reached the cairn, Olive patted the stones like a beloved
old pet." (228)
This moment marks the end of the peculiar children's time in the loop and on the island. This loop
has been such an important source of protection for them, and the cairn was the entrance to this
sanctuary. Naturally it is difficult for the children to say goodbye to this part of their lives, and this
simile emphasizes the sadness they feel at their departure.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Irony

Photographs
Photographs are almost always perceived as a depiction of the absolute truth, a frozen image of a
moment in time preserved exactly as it was. Photographs are meant to help solve mysteries. It is
ironic, then, that for Jacob, seeing the photographs of the peculiar children only makes him more
confused because he believes they have been manipulated.
Dr. Golan
The revelation that Dr. Golan was actually a wight seeking to manipulate Jacob is ironic. A
psychiatrist is meant to be trusted absolutely with a person's fragile mind and mental conditions,
and yet all the while Dr. Golan was messing with Jacob's head, convincing him that he was crazy
when really he knew that what Jacob saw was the truth.
The Hollows
The existence of the hollowgasts is ironic in itself. As peculiars, the hollows sought out
immortality. In a way, they got it because as monsters the hollows can live indefinitely. However,
they live a soulless life as a monster, undoubtedly not the kind of life any of them envisioned for
themselves.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Imagery

Abandoned House
"Fireplaces were throttled with vines that had descended from the
roof and begun to spread across the floors like alien tentacles. The
kitchen was a science experiment gone terribly wrong—entire
shelves of jarred food had exploded from sixty seasons of freezing
and thawing, splattering the wall with evil-looking stains—and
fallen plaster lay so thickly over the dining room floor that for a
moment I thought it had snowed indoors." (56)
Jacob takes in every aspect of the abandoned house on his first trip there, shocked by how old and
decrepit it is, how different from his grandfather's stories. The text is rich in detail as he moves
through the house and observes all the evidence of the children who once lived here, now long
gone.
Murdering Monster
"It stared back with eyes that swam in dark liquid, furrowed
trenches of carbon-black flesh loose on its hunched frame, its
mouth hinged open grotesquely so that a mass of long eel-like
tongues could wriggle out." (24)
Jacob stares in stunned shock at the strange creature that has just killed his grandfather, observing
every inch of its face and trying to believe that such a monster could be real. In this moment, all
the stories his grandfather told him about monsters come to life. It is so difficult for him to process
that he faints.
Time Loop Reset
"The wind-bent boughs of trees were frozen in place. The sky was
a photograph of arrested flames licking a cloud bank. Drops of
rain hung suspended before my eyes. And in the middle of the
circle of children, like the object of some arcane ritual, there
hovered a bomb, its downward-facing tip seemingly balanced on
Adam's outstretched finger." (115)
This moment completely defies reason for Jacob, as he watches the time loop reset and the bombs
disappear. Miss Peregrine's ability to manipulate time has turned this terrible, horrifying moment
of death into a beautiful display to be appreciated each night, showing that there is beauty in even
the most savage of moments.
Battleships
"In the distance, black against the rising sun, a silent procession of
battleships punctuated the horizon." (230)
As they row away from Cairnholm, the peculiar children observe the battleships on the horizon, a
sign that the war is not yet over and that there is still much more to fear. They do not let this sight
deter them though, and continue rowing, determined to face whatever it is that is out there.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Literary
Elements

Genre
Young Adult Fantasy

Setting and Context

The Island of Cairnholm, Wales, partly in the present and partly in the year 1940

Narrator and Point of View

The novel is narrated by Jacob Portman, a sixteen-year-old boy in search of the truth about his
grandfather's past, in first-person past tense.

Tone and Mood

The beginning of the novel has a mysterious, suspenseful mood, as Jacob attempts to uncover all
of the mysteries his grandfather has left him with. Later, the novel's tone becomes more urgent as
Jacob and his friends fight the hollows and wights and attempt to save their beloved Miss
Peregrine.

Protagonist and Antagonist

Jacob Portman is the protagonist, while the main antagonist is the wight who has taken many
forms in Jacob's life, most notably as his psychiatrist, Dr. Golan.

Major Conflict
In the first half of the novel, the conflict revolves around Jacob's attempt to solve the mystery of
his grandfather's past, while his family and friends believe he is going crazy. In the second half of
the novel, Jacob becomes immersed in the conflict that is occurring in the world of peculiar
people. They must stop the hollows and wights from killing peculiars and kidnapping ymbrynes in
an attempt to use time loops to become completely immortal.

Climax
The novel reaches its climax when the wight reveals his identity and a fight ensues, first between
Jacob, his friends, and the hollow, and then between the peculiar children and the wight after he
kidnaps Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet.

Foreshadowing
Jacob tells the story from the perspective of someone who has already lived all of these events, so
the prologue of the novel foreshadows what is to come when Jacob separates his life into "Before"
and "After" and alludes to some "extraordinary" things that are about to happen to him. Additional
foreshadowing occurs when Jacob spots the strange white eyes of one of his grandfather's
neighbors—he later realizes that these eyes meant that he was in the presence of a wight (21).

Understatement
N/A

Allusions
N/A

Imagery
See Imagery section.
Paradox
N/A

Parallelism
Jacob's budding relationship with Emma parallels the relationship that she once had with his
grandfather Abe. Much of Jacob's experience in the loop parallels his grandfather's own seventy
years before, as he comes to know the peculiar children who reside there and learns about the
danger that they face. He even has the same peculiar ability to see hollows as his grandfather did.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

N/A

Personification
"What stood before me now was no refuge from monsters but a monster itself, staring down from
its perch on the hill with vacant hunger." (55)

When Jacob first lays eyes upon the abandoned house, he speaks about it as if it is a creature itself,
staring at him with the eyes of a beast that has not been fed in a long time.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Essay

Questions
. 1
How does Riggs incorporate photographs into this novel? Why
are they important?
.
Because these are real, vintage photographs that Riggs found prior to writing the book, the
photographs ground this fantasy novel in the reality that we all recognize, while still
preserving its magical, fantastical elements. These are photos we might see every day, except
with something a little strange about them—similar to the peculiar children themselves,
who resemble common children in all ways except for their special abilities. Seeing these
photographs in the text also better allows readers to put themselves in Jacob's shoes, as he
uncovers and interprets each on in turn.

.
. 2
Is the search of the wights and hollows for immortality truly
inherently wrong? Why or why not?
.
The novel attempts to draw a clear line between good and evil—the wights and hollows and
everything they pursue are evil, while Jacob, Miss Peregrine, and her wards are the good
forces attempting to fight this evil off. The reality, though, is more complicated than that. Is it
truly wrong to want immortality? Not necessarily, but this novel's message makes it clear that
what is wrong is their greed, their desire to mess with the natural order of things solely for
personal reasons. It is greed that drives them to reach beyond limits and covet what they are
not meant to have, and the implications of such greed is why they must be stopped.

.
. 3
Does Jacob transform over the course of the novel? How?
.
By the end of the novel, Jacob becomes much more comfortable with himself and his place in
the world. He began the novel as a loner, alienated by those around him who believed he was
crazy. Early on he lost his grandfather, the only person with whom he had a strong connection
before coming to Cairnholm. When he entered the loop, he finally felt like he belonged
somewhere, and developed a new sense of confidence and purpose that drove him to be a
leader among his friends.

.
. 4
What role does Miss Peregrine play in the lives of the peculiar
children?
.
For the peculiar children, Miss Peregrine is both a teacher figure and a mother figure. She
ensures that they learn everything they need—manners, book smarts, and life skills—to fully
function as individuals, even though they are in the time loop and have not aged in seventy
years. She is also a mother to them, protecting them and shielding them from any harm that
might befall them in the outside world. Miss Peregrine is the glue that holds the children's
home together, which is why her eventual kidnapping disturbs them so much.

.
. 5
In what ways was Jacob's relationship with Grandpa Portman
different from his father's relationship with him?
.
Jacob and Grandpa Portman shared a special connection, and this stems from the fact that
even as Jacob grew older, he still hung on to the stories that his grandfather told him.
Conversely, Jacob's father shut himself off to Grandpa Portman's stories and tales when he
was younger after feeling like Grandpa Portman was not showing him the love that a father
ought to show his son. Grandpa Portman was more of a father figure to Jacob than he was to
his own son, which stems from the fact that he had not been truly ready to have a family again
until Jacob came along.

.
. 6
Why was it necessary that Grandpa Portman die at the
beginning of the novel? Would the story have been the same if
he had survived?
 .
Grandpa Portman's death, though tragic, was the catalyst that Jacob needed to start believing
his grandfather's stories and go in search of the truth at last. Had Grandpa Portman survived,
Jacob likely would have gone on believing that his grandfather's stories were imagined and
that he was going senile in his old age. The journey that Grandpa Portman's death led to was
important not only because it uncovered the truth, but also because it brought Jacob to a group
of people that made him truly feel at home for the first time in his life.

.
. 7
How do Jacob and Emma experience tension between the past
and present in their relationship?
.
Though Emma and Jacob clearly have feelings for each other, it is difficult for them to forget
the events of the past that affect their present situation. Jacob is unsure for a long time
whether Emma actually likes him, or whether he is just a stand-in for Grandpa Abe, who she
was waiting for in vain for so long. Emma, too, struggles with this, but eventually the two are
able to put the tensions of the past behind them and live in the present moment.

.
. 8
Discuss the author's choice of setting. Why place the children's
home on such a small, sparsely populated island?
.
Aside from the fact that the setting helps to keep the peculiar children isolated and secret, tiny
Cairnholm allows Jacob to find his footing there quickly and develop relationships with
everyone else on the island. Its isolation from the rest of the world—there is only one phone
on the entire island—means that Jacob can push away his life back in the US and focus solely
on his mission while on the island, which is discovering as much about his grandfather and
the world he came from as he possibly can.

.
. 9
How does this novel fit the mold of a typical heroic quest story?
.
In the quest stories that make up much of classic literature, a hero will undertake a complex
journey and, in the process, transform himself in some way. Though Jacob is not a typical
hero, he does exactly this, setting out with the aim of discovering some hidden knowledge and
taking a literal journey to Cairnholm, Wales. Like any hero, he is pushed far beyond his
comfort zone and faces numerous enemies that he manages to overcome, at least for the time
being. The end of the story makes it clear that Jacob, our hero, still has many more journeys to
set out on, indicating that the quest story will continue in sequels.

.
. 10
How is the physical house that the peculiar children live in a
character in itself?
.
As soon as Jacob sees the house, abandoned in his own time, he characterizes it with
descriptions typically reserved for living things. In the present-day, the house is imposing and
reserved, keeping hidden all the secrets of its past. Inside the loop though, the house is lively
and full of excitement, feeding off the energy of the children it keeps within. In many ways,
the house is a protective figure for the children, guarding them from the horrors of the outside
world the same way Miss Peregrine herself does.