Hollow City (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children) - Hardcover

Riggs, Ransom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594746125 ISBN 13: 9781594746123

Publisher: Quirk Books, 2014

Synopsis

The #1 New York Times best-selling series

To find a cure for Miss Peregrine, their beloved headmistress, Jacob Portman and his peculiar friends journey through a time loop to London, 1940—the peculiar capital of the world

Having escaped Miss Peregrine’s island by the skin of their teeth, Jacob and the rest of the peculiar children are fleeing the malevolent  wights following them. Miss Peregrine is the only one who can help, but as she is trapped in bird form, the children must take a time loop to World War II London in search of a cure. 

Along the way, the children encounter new allies and a menagerie of peculiar animals, but hideous surprises and betrayals lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom. 

Complete with dozens of newly discovered (and thoroughly mesmerizing) vintage photographs, the second chapter of the beloved Peculiar Children series will enchant readers of all ages. 

“I was blown away. . . . Hollow City is fantastic.”—USAToday.com

“A worthy follow-up, and as addictive a read as the first.”—Hypable

“A perfect blend of creepiness and thoughtfulness.”—PopMatters

“Ideal for fans of Neil Gaiman and Daniel Kraus, Hollow City blends fantasy and horror into a world that will engross readers and leave them eager for more.”—Shelf Awareness for Readers

About this title

About the Author

Ransom Riggs is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children novels. Riggs was born on a farm in Maryland and grew up in southern Florida. He studied literature at Kenyon College and film at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the best-selling author Tahereh Mafi, and their family.

Reviews

Gr 8 Up—This harrowing tale picks up right where Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk, 2011) left off: having narrowly escaped wights and hollowgasts (monsters), Jacob, Emma, and their group of peculiars (young mutants, à la the X-Men, with a dash of time travel abilities) are on the move to London to find a cure for their headmistress Miss Peregrine who has been trapped in her bird form, but time is running short. Moving through time loops, they meet a menagerie of characters who help them along the way, but danger lurks at every corner, and horrors are not far behind. Even if the teens reach London alive, will it be enough to save Miss Peregrine from an ornithological fate? This book is perfectly paced, suspenseful, and scary. It is dark and dreadful but also humorous and touching. The peculiars are intriguing, each with fascinating powers, such as invisibility or premonition. They play off of one another's strengths and weaknesses, which progresses the story and further develops the characters. And of course there is the book's main attraction: the found vernacular photography, vintage pictures that Riggs has collected from flea markets and archives. The quirky and creepy snapshots perfectly illustrate the characters and settings, reinforcing the dark atmosphere of the narrative. New readers of the series will find this novel a treat and will be able to sift through summaries of previous events to place themselves in the story. Fans of the first title will find this book a treasure. The only downside: waiting for the third installment to find out what happens to Jacob and his peculiar friends.—Billy Parrott, New York Public Library

Hard on the heels of Riggs’ first hugely successful effort, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011), comes this equally creepy sequel, which picks up where the first book left off. Jacob and the 10 peculiar children are now headed to war-torn London (the year is 1940), desperate to find a way to release Miss Peregrine from the spell that has trapped her in the body of a bird. But the doughty band is headed into terrible danger, for the metropolis is overrun by evil wights and their minions, the fiendish hollowgasts. Together, the villains have imprisoned all but two of the surviving ymbrines: the missing Miss Wren and the transformed Miss Peregrine. Can Jacob and friends find the former, and can she then help them? Ah, therein lies the tale. Like the first volume, this one is generously illustrated with peculiar period photographs that capture and enhance the eerie mood and mode. Fans will be pleased with this second volume and downright delighted to know that a third in the series is in the offing. Grades 6-9. --Michael Cart

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

     We rowed out through the harbor, past bobbing boats weeping rust from their seams, past juries of silent seabirds roosting atop the barnacled remains of sunken docks, past fishermen who lowered their nets to stare frozenly as we slipped by, uncertain whether we were real or imagined; a procession of waterborne ghosts, or ghosts soon to be. We were ten children and one bird in three small and unsteady boats, rowing with quiet intensity straight out to sea, the only safe harbor for miles receding quickly behind us, craggy and magical in the blue-gold light of dawn. Our goal, the rutted coast of mainland Wales, was somewhere before us but only dimly visible, an inky smudge squatting along the far horizon.
     We rowed past the old lighthouse, tranquil in the distance, which only last night had been the scene of so many traumas. It was there that, with bombs exploding around us, we had nearly drowned, nearly been torn apart by bullets; that I had taken a gun and pulled its trigger and killed a man, an act still incomprehensible to me; that we had lost Miss Peregrine and got her back again—snatched from the steel jaws of a submarine—though the Miss Peregrine who was returned to us was damaged, in need of help we didn’t know how to give. She perched now on the stern of our boat, watching the sanctuary she’d created slip away, more lost with every oar stroke.
     Finally we rowed past the breakwater and into the great blank open, and the glassy surface of the harbor gave way to little waves that chopped at the sides of our boats. I heard a plane threading the clouds high above us and let my oars drag, neck craning up, arrested by a vision of our little armada from such a height: this world I had chosen, and everything I had in it, and all our precious, peculiar lives, contained in three splinters of wood adrift upon the vast, unblinking eye of the sea.
     Mercy.

Edition details

• Publisher: Quirk Books
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594746125
• ISBN 13: 9781594746123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400