Books with Pictures are the BEST

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk/2011) has everything I could hope for in a novel.  Superpowers, secret worlds, pictures, a hint of time-travelling children….

Growing up, Jacob loved hearing his grandfather’s childhood stories from his days in an orphanage for ‘peculiar children.’ That is, until the kids at school started giving him a hard time about his ‘fairy stories,’ and he decided that his grandfather was crazy, or worse, a liar.  Jacob’s opinion is unequivocally altered however, when he finds his grandfather dead in the woods, and catches a glimpse of the many-tongued monster that did him in, lurking in the bushes.  So, pro—grandpa’s not a liar, con—Jacob may be insane.  With the help of his shrink (natch), Jacob convinces his folks he needs to visit his grandfather’s former home, on a remote British island.  Once there, Jacob discovers the orphanage abandoned, bombed out from the war.

Jacob remains convinced, however, that there is something he’s missing.   And of course he’s right—the real orphanage is safe and intact, preserved in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again during World War II.  And you can only reach the right time and place by going through a cave, and yes all the stories his grandfather told him were true, and maybe someone is using Jacob to get close to the peculiar children, and animals are suspiciously dying in Jacob’s real time, and also, he may have made out with his grandfather’s former girlfriend.   Got all that?

Riggs novel is original and captivating.  Sure, it’s not perfect.  Jacob’s a little whiny, and maybe a bit thick too (you didn’t realize your grandfather’s neighbor, your pool guy, your bus driver and your shrink were ALL THE SAME PERSON?  Major fail bro), but you can’t help but be pulling for the guy.  Riggs has created a magical world with an underbelly of discontent and complexity, where even the good guys have their own secrets.  I look forward to the follow-up, and recommend you borrow this, right after Princess Consuela returns it.

In which I Strong-arm My Way Into This Blog*

Through a strategic maneuvering of whining and harassment I’ve managed to get myself invited to blog (I frequently wonder how I have any friends).  There are so many many YA topics I could tackle here (expect an in-depth analysis of time-traveling children in the near future), but I think I’m going to follow the previous lead and describe my library set-up first.  This is in no part due to the fact that I’m verging on a kettle corn/frozen yogurt induced coma (I typed comma first and for some reason I thought that was hilarious.  This is only a sampling of the literary gems you have to look forward to).

This picture is kind of crappy because I took it on my phone, but you get the important parts–1) obviously I don’t have a boyfriend and 2) I don’t have nearly enough bookshelves.

Last time I moved I did a huge overhaul and got rid of a bunch of books, but I’ve quickly replaced them (amazon shouldn’t make it so easy to order things).  Now I’m at the point where I’m stacking books sideways on top of other books, which is just a road to nowhere.  I guess I could get rid of some dachshund figurines, but it would really throw off the delicate decorating aesthetic I’ve created here, and no one wants that.

Unlike previous bloggers (I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be anonymous so I’m not calling anyone by their names.  Unless we can come up with secret blog names in which case I want to be Sparkles) I’m not BFF with all sorts of authors that sign things for me or make special trips to certain TLA booths in order to give people signed copies of first editions.  Sadly.  So instead of showing you pictures of those I was just going to tell you about my favorite non-time-traveling-zero-magic-no-vampires-no-one-even-falls-in-love-and-yet-it-is-awesome children’s book!  It has the unfortunate title of Goodnight Mr. Tom (I like to think that this ms came up at the end of the acquisitions meeting, and everyone was tired of sitting on those uncomfortable chairs, and like three people had to pee, and no one brought chocolate to this meeting, and the boss kept getting up to take calls in her office, and everyone was just like, yeh that title is fine.  It’s great!  I love it!  Lets just go with that).  Anyway, despite the title (and a dopey picture on the front) that sounds like it’s a picture book or a book for slow-learners and makes me kind of hide it with my bag if I’m reading it on the subway or in line at Kroger (which I do sometimes if the line is really long, because, multi-tasking ya’ll) it is totally awesome.  It is about this boy, Will, during World War II, who gets sent to the English countryside when they evacuate kids from London because of the bombing.  And Mr. Tom ends up taking him in because there’s no one else to do it, and Mr. Tom is all gruff and old, and Will’s mom used to beat the crap out of him so he’s all weakly and afraid, and they need each other and Mr. Tom becomes nicer and starts interacting with the community because of Will, and Will becomes a lot cooler and makes friends, and they have a dog, and a Jewish friend, and then Will’s mom makes him come home because she’s sick, but she’s not really sick, and then she locks him in a closet, and Will also can draw really well.

I think that pretty much sums it up.  It’s one of those books that lots of things happen, but there’s never like, a build-up, climax, resolution…its kind of like: this happens, this happens, this happens.  I can tell I’m really selling this.  No wonder my Borders went out of business.

Anyway, here is a picture of the two (yes two! Ballin’ out of control!) copies I have:As you can tell one has been chewed on by a dog and dropped in the bathtub repeatedly well loved, and the other is in pristine condition.  The nice looking one is because we were supposed to exchange copies of our favorite childhood book with each other at our office Christmas party, but then people didn’t want too, and I had the flu, so yadda yadda now I have two.  If you want to borrow the non-gross one, you may.  Also, I still think that exchange idea was a good one.

Anyone have a favorite childhood book that is relatively  unknown?

*I am uncertain about the use of hyphenation in this title, and yet too lazy to look it up.