Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a book unlike anything I've ever read. It mixes two of my favorite things: photography and reading. The author, Ransom Riggs, tells a unique story of peculiar children living on an island based on a collection of quirky and sometimes disturbing black and white photographs. The pictures are dispersed every few pages in the book, and they go along with what is taking place in the story at that time. The pictures are very helpful in creating a mental image of the strange characters throughout the story. At the same time though, the reader is not able to be as creative as they would normally be when imagining characters and events in the story. Whether the use of the real-life pictures in the book is beneficial to the reader or not is debatable. I, for one, like the use of the pictures in this particular story. I agree with critics that in most books, it is better for the reader to create their own image of the characters and setting, but in this book, I think the pictures add to the confusion, horror, and fantasy that readers feel while diving into the plot.
The above picture is on the cover of the book, and it is referred to many times in the story. Pictures such as this one help me as the reader imagine things that are unheard of in normal, everyday life. Jacob, the main character meets so-called "peculiar" children in the book that have abilities and differences that are foreign to our world such as levitation, invisibility, and multiple mouths. The extremely real-looking photographs like the girl levitating above give the reader a solid mental image of what these children look like.
Not only do the pictures clarify unfamiliar characters, but they also do the opposite and succeed at confusing the reader a little bit more. They leave me wondering things like: are these pictures real, where did the author get the pictures, are they edited? A confused reader is one that gets sucked into the story and continues to read the entire book to get some answers. That is exactly what I plan on doing.
Really interesting thoughts here about the role of images in the things we read. Part of me would only see them as distractions if they weren't originally considered as part of the novel itself--if the author didn't choose the images, or intend them to be there, they would feel like gimmicks to me, I think.
ReplyDeleteIn a typical kid's book, they are meant to go together, so it's a different experience.
I agree that the images you include in your post seem to match the creepy tone of the book. They look like deliberate replicas of some famous photographs by Diane Arbus. You should google "Diane Arbus Twins" and look at the image that comes up.