Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel review

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel
Ransom Riggs (story), Cassandra Jean (art)
October 29th 2013
Headline

Ransom Riggs's haunting fantasy bestseller adapted to a graphic novel! 
As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive.

I have yet to read the actual novel novel of Miss Peregrine, so I'm just going to give a heads up about that and this is my first experience with the story and all that, so I can't really judge the graphic novel on how it matches up with the book itself, but I will say that it has made me want to read the book. I really enjoyed the graphic novel for Miss Peregrine by itself, though, so I wouldn't let it put you off reading it if you haven't read the book, either. It's definitely just a beautiful thing just to own. Seriously, it a hardback and it's got a really nice cover and the spine is so pretty (I love a good spine) and I just want to hold it. I've kind of gotten away from any point that I may have originally had to open this review with. Sorry about that.

I think my favourite thing about this graphic novel was the art. I love Cassandra Jean's art, anyway (seriously, her fanart is amazing) and it was about 60% of what sold me on this book, the other 40% being curiosity about what this book was about any way because I know a bunch of people who loved it. Anyway, the art was super good and I actually liked the incorporation of all the pictures that were used in the book. I thought that it would look a bit incongruous, but it worked. And the colouring was really great, too. All of the parts of the book that weren't in the temporal loop (with the Peculiar Children) were in black and white, and all the parts that were were in colour, plus I just thought that the colouring was really simple but effective and really helped with the tone. 

I feel like I can't really say a lot about the story, obviously because I haven't read the book, but while it was very enjoyble in this incarnation, I felt like it was lacking something. I don't really know what, but I got this with the Vampire Academy graphic novel, too. It just felt a bit like something was missing? Which isn't a problem that I usually have with graphic novels and comics. Maybe it's just an adaptation problem, like when you watch a movie of a book and you know that there should be more there, and that it isn't everything that the book was but it's still good in it's own right. Yeah.

I did really like the characters, though. Even if there (probably) wasn't as much time spent on getting to know all of the peculiar children as there (probably) is in the book, and I imagine there was a bit more time spent on developing the romance between Emma and Jacob because that felt a little bit plonked in in this. But yeah, I thought that the characters were really sweet and I love big ensembles of superpowered side characters. Such fun. All books should have them. And I did actually really like the plot. I thought that it was definitely interesting, if not half as near as creepy as I wanted it to be, and I do want to read the book now more than I did before I read the graphic novel. 

So yeah, the graphic novel for Miss Peregrine was a very enjoyable read, and the art was awesome which is kind of key for a graphic novel. So if you're a big fan of Miss Peregrine, you should read it. Or if you're not, then you should still read it because it might make you a fan of it. Who knows.