Begin the Week with Words

I squeezed in one more book before my students come back to school tomorrow, appropriately the YA novel Every Day by David Levithan. More on my opinion of it later this week, but I can say I found a few good quotes that stood out. Things I felt were universal truths, I guess you could say. So here are two of them, enjoy your week!

"I know from experience that beneath every peripheral girl is a central truth. She's hiding hers away, but at the same time she wants me to see it." 

"She's being kind. Which is much more a sign of character than mere niceness. Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen." 

Miss Peregrine's World of Peculiar!

Big classroom hits!

Ugh! I have to start with the fact that I read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and its sequel, Hollow City, quickly and with great interest...only to find out there's another book coming. Ahhhhhh! It's a series, which I totally didn't know going into it. I hate starting series before they all come out. The third book will be out late 2015. And apparently, Tim Burton is making a movie of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, for which Wikipedia mentions a release date of March 4, 2016.

An example of "weird" pictures within.
We see stuff like this cause of the Internet,
but before the Internet, such strange things
were few and far between.

Okay, now that I have that out of my system, I truly enjoyed these books. Fantasy is the name of the game with these YA novels, which usually places a book at a disadvantage with me. However, Riggs formed the story around groups of actual old photographs. Strange and spooky black and white or sepia photos that actually exist adorn the covers and pages of these stories. The narration pulls the random photos together, forming a fictional, but cool story about the why's and what if's of the weird photographs. At any point where Riggs describes a strange person or weird set up, you'd better believe a new picture will appear on the following page.


That small connection to reality (the photos) drew me in, along with the wonderful reviews from all sorts of readers - especially from those who don't care for YA and make sure you know it! As Miss Peregrine's gained popularity, I started recommending it to students, who are forever my guinea pigs when I have too much to read and not enough time (like, always). Every single one loved it. Anyway, I wanted to see the cool pictures and while I was at it I might as read the book, right?

Some photos are obviously photoshopped,
but back in the day, with such limited
technology, people wouldn't realize this, or
at least wonder how it was done.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children finds teenage Jacob bored and out of place with life. However, a chain of events sets in motion discoveries that no one can imagine and no one will believe. Fighting for his life and the lives of new friends, Jacob time travels, fights monsters, and ultimately finds a place where he belongs. Hollow City picks up right where Miss Peregrine's leaves off, continuing the story you so want to hear the end of...until you hit the last five pages and realize there aren't enough pages left for this to wrap up and then see that there is a whole other book that won't be out for a year...then you're just cursing under your breath.

But it's good up until then. And I'll be a happy person come end of this year and I get to continue us the journey with Miss Peregrine and her peculiar children.

Have I piqued your interest enough?