By: Kinsey Bushart Freelancer
First I must confess that I only recently read “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” and I had only read it because I am a firm believer in reading the book before seeing the movie. Ransom Riggs’ book is whimsical, funny and more than a little bit creepy.
One character, a boy named Enoch, is so “peculiar” he has the ability to bring inanimate objects to life with the heart of something already dead. If child necromancers, bird-women and evil monsters who resemble Slender Man are something you’re interested in, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” is the book for you. Plus, the plethora of sarcastic one-liners and humorous characterization makes it so any fan of fantasy can connect with characters as well as enjoy the suspenseful or light-hearted situations those characters find themselves in.
The movie adaptation itself has trouble keeping to the already written guidelines from the published original. Most movie adaptations from books have a way of wandering off from the original storyline to either simplify the story and thus shorten it, or attempt to make it more interesting. This can be off-putting to some, including myself.
“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” is the same in that regard; with major character changes concerning special abilities and even physical appearances, plus the deletion of entire characters depending on their overall importance to the storyline. These changes effect the movie enough to bother some stickler book fans about ruining the entire thing.
Now this movie does better than other book adaptations, especially compared to films like the Percy Jackson series or “Eragon”, so it’s not really something to be too upset about, unless you’re easily bothered by such things. While not a terrible movie overall (I enjoyed it immensely) the movie adaptation of “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” doesn’t do the greatest job matching perfectly with its book, not that it was really expected to.
Contact the author at kbushart16@wou.edu
