Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Jacob spends the next several months repeating his story to many adults, and he’s haunted by terrible nightmares, particularly of the creature he saw. He’s convinced it killed Grandpa Portman and that it will return to kill him, too. For several weeks, Jacob refuses to leave the house, sleeping in the laundry room because it has no windows. He blames himself for what happened, wondering how it might have gone differently if he believed his grandfather about the monsters. It doesn’t help that no one believes Jacob’s story, even though he knows it sounds crazy.

When a policeman interviews Jacob and insinuates that Jacob needs to “see someone,” Jacob flips him off, sparking a severe fight with his mom and dad. Jacob yells that they are glad Grandpa Portman is dead and that he was the only one who loved his grandfather. Later, Jacob describes the monster to a sketch artist; Jacob wonders if it’s simply an attempt to placate him, especially when the artist tries to give Jacob the sketch.

Even Ricky doesn’t believe Jacob about the monster, and he was there. The policemen conclude that a feral dog killed his grandfather, which angers Jacob. One day, when Jacob is sitting on his roof deck with Ricky, Ricky tells Jacob that if he keeps talking about monsters, they’ll “put [him] away.” Jacob gets angry and makes a joke about Ricky’s mom. Ricky gets annoyed in turn, shoving Jacob roughly and then leaving. They don’t see each other for months afterward.

Jacob’s parents take Jacob to a psychiatrist named Dr. Golan. In only two sessions, Dr. Golan convinces Jacob that the monster was a product of his imagination and the trauma of his grandfather’s death. He calls it “acute stress reaction.” Even with this diagnosis, Jacob still suffers from terrible nightmares and panic attacks. Dr. Golan tries to prescribe Jacob several different medications, but they make him feel “fat and stupid,” and they don’t even work. Jacob starts lying to Dr. Golan, pretending to be fine, but Dr. Golan sees past this.

Every night, Jacob has the same dream: he’s crouching in his grandfather’s bedroom with a pink plastic BB gun. His grandfather is also there, frantically trying to buy guns from a vending machine, but he can’t pay in time. Then the monsters enter, and Jacob’s gun can’t fire. His grandfather is yelling instructions—the last words that he said to Jacob. Dr. Golan makes Jacob repeat the dream each session, but Jacob is no closer to understanding it or his grandfather’s last words. He feels that he owes it to his grandfather to decipher them.

Jacob tries to investigate what “the loop” means—perhaps a street in his grandfather’s neighborhood—whoever “Emerson” could be, or what the date might mean. Dr. Golan encourages Jacob to keep searching, but Jacob only grows frustrated at getting nowhere and still having terrible dreams. Jacob gives up when Dr. Golan tells him to go back to “the scene of [his] trauma.” He returns to his grandfather’s house, which his family is cleaning out before selling it.

The house makes Jacob sad rather than scared, and he quickly gets down to business emptying the house. He lobbies hard for things like National Geographic magazines or keeping his grandfather’s bowling shirts, but his dad always refuses. Jacob angrily accuses his father of trying to get rid of the stuff so that Jacob will forget what happened, and his dad gets angry in turn, eventually storming out of the room.

Jacob then goes to his grandfather’s bedroom and notices the old cigar box with the photos Jacob knows so well. Beneath the ones he’s seen are more photos that seem obviously doctored: a girl stuck in a bottle, another floating child, a dog with a boy’s face on it, a young contortionist doing an extreme backbend, and a pair of twins dressed in very strange costumes. Jacob understands why his grandfather didn’t show him these photos: they would have frightened him too much. Jacob wonders if his grandfather’s last words are similarly fake, just to fill his life with nightmares and paranoia. Jacob closes the box, returns to the living room, and gives his dad and aunt Susie the box to throw away.

At Jacob’s next appointment with Dr. Golan, Jacob wonders if the sessions are a waste of time because he continues to be plagued by nightmares. Dr. Golan says it sounds like Jacob is quitting, and Jacob doesn’t strike him as a quitter. Jacob corrects Dr. Golan and says that if he believes that, he doesn’t know Jacob very well. 

That weekend is Jacob’s 16th birthday, and his parents have been dropping unsubtle hints that they’re throwing a party for him. Jacob has pleaded with them to skip the party, but his parents worry that he’s becoming lonely. In reality, Jacob knows that his mom will take any excuse to throw a party. And so, when Jacob returns home from his frustrating session with Dr. Golan, Ricky and a bunch of family (to whom Jacob rarely speaks) are there to surprise him. Jacob is tired and upset, but he tells his mom that he’s fine because he doesn’t want to disappoint her.

As Jacob’s mom plays hostess, Jacob and Ricky greet each other coldly. They haven’t spoken since their fight on the roof. Before they can talk, Jacob’s uncle, Bobby, pulls him aside to ask how he’s doing, revealing that Jacob’s mom said he’s getting better. Bobby then invites Jacob to come to Tampa that summer to see how the family business works and to spend time with the family. Jacob would rather do anything else than live with his uncle and bratty cousins—and he doesn’t want to join the “corporate cage” of Smart Aid just yet. So, he tells his uncle that Dr. Golan might not think it’s a good idea right now.

Jacob’s mom then insists that he open his presents in front of everyone. He opens the smallest first, which is a key to his parents’ four-year-old car—they are getting a new one, so he can have the old one. Jacob is embarrassed to get such an expensive gift in front of Ricky, whose car costs less than Jacob’s monthly allowance when he was 12. Jacob then opens another: a digital camera he really wanted the previous summer. Jacob is amazed, and his dad says that Jacob can take the pictures for a new bird book he’s working on. His mom asks sarcastically what happened to the previous bird book, which embarrasses Jacob’s dad.

Jacob quickly moves on, reaching for another present. As Jacob opens it, his Aunt Susie says it was from his grandfather. The room grows quiet, and Jacob opens it to find an old hardcover book: The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. No one else knows about his grandfather’s last words, and he looks at Susie in disbelief. She says that his grandfather wrote his name in the front of the book, so she thought he wanted Jacob to have it. Jacob reads the inscription: “To Jacob Magellan Portman, and the worlds he has yet to discover.”

Afraid he might start crying, Jacob gets up to leave, and a letter slips out of the book. In disbelief, he says that he doesn’t feel well and runs into his room. He opens the letter quickly and deciphers the loose handwriting. It is addressed to his grandfather, from “Headmistress Alma Lefay Peregrine,” explaining that they still think of him often on the island. Little has changed there, but it is calm. She asks for a recent picture if he has one and writes, “E misses you terribly.” The writer also includes an old snapshot of herself, silhouetted and smoking a pipe like that of Sherlock Holmes.

Jacob knows immediately that this is the letter his grandfather left for him to find. The return address indicates that it was sent from Wales, from a place called Cairnholm Island. Jacob also realizes that his grandfather once told him about a “bird who smoked a pipe,” and seeing the picture, he wonders if that means Miss Peregrine—whose name is that of a bird. He wonders if his grandfather’s caretaker is still there, old and withered.

The envelope’s postmark is 15 years old. Jacob thinks if Miss Peregrine was around 25 when she was running a children’s home in 1939, she’d be in her late 90s now—so it’s possible she could still be alive. He thinks that there might be people there who knew Grandpa Portman as a kid, who knew more about his life and his secrets.

Convincing Jacob’s parents to let him spend part of his summer off the coast of Wales isn’t easy. He doesn’t want to tell them about Grandpa Portman’s last words, so he just says that he wants to learn more about the family history. A few things turn in his favor: Uncle Bobby gets cold feet about Jacob living in his house, so that’s no longer an option. Jacob’s dad also learns that Cairnholm Island is a renowned bird habitat, and so he gets more excited about the idea of Jacob going there. Most crucially, Jacob talks to Dr. Golan about it, who encourages his parents to let Jacob go, saying that a trip there could help Jacob work through the trauma of his grandfather’s death.

After Dr. Golan signs off, everything happens very quickly: Jacob and his dad plan to go for three weeks in June, and his mom is very excited about it. Jacob overhears her on the phone, glad to have three weeks without “two needy children.” Jacob is hurt, but he doesn’t say anything because he loves his mother. Rather, he loves her in the way that people are supposed to love their moms, not because he thinks he’d otherwise like her very much—particularly because of the way she throws money around.

Jacob tries to find out if Miss Peregrine is still alive, but he can’t find anything on the internet, and very few people on Cairnholm have phones. He only finds one number for the whole island, and when it connects on the other end, there’s a huge amount of noise and a man yelling into the phone asking who it is. Before Jacob can say anything, the line goes dead. All Jacob wants to do is figure out his grandfather’s mystery and return to his “unextraordinary life.”