Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

On the ferry, Jacob and his dad peer through the fog at Cairnholm. It’s cold and wet even though it’s June, and they’ve spent 36 hours traveling already. The island appears bleak and is guarded by a massive flock of birds, which thrills Jacob’s dad. Jacob, on the other hand, notices the many shipwrecks beneath them. One of the crewmen points to a passing wreck and says that it was sunk by a German U-Boat during World War II. He reckons that the U-Boats sank half the British navy.

Soon after, the ferry docks, and Jacob and his dad journey into the little town, which isn’t as picturesque as it looked from afar. Diesel generators power the island, and the whole place looks a bit dilapidated and abandoned. Jacob and his dad try to find their bed and breakfast—a humble place called the Priest Home—but everyone they ask seems confused. They walk into a little museum to ask directions, and the curator there directs them to a place called the Priest Hole. 

Jacob’s dad then asks the curator about the old children’s home, but the man doesn’t quite know what they’re talking about. He says he might know the place they mean: it’s on the other side of the island, past the bog and through the woods. He warns them not to go alone, because if they stray from the path, they could easily go over a cliff. Jacob’s dad makes Jacob promise not to go there alone, and Jacob does, reluctantly.

Jacob and his dad then find the Priest Hole, which looks more like a pub. Inside, the bartender introduces himself as Kev and leads them up to their rooms. He gives them oil lamps for when the generators stop running at 10 p.m. Kev also tells Jacob and his dad  that if they need to make a phone call, they have the only landline on the island. Jacob realizes that this is the phone line he got through to before he left. Curious, Jacob asks Kev what a priest hole is. Kev explains that when being Catholic was punishable by death, the place provided shelter for priests. He gestures to a door in the floor, which leads to a crawl space where the priests hid.

That night, Jacob and his dad attempt to go to bed early, but the noise downstairs prevents them until the generators go out at 10 p.m. Suddenly plunged into silence and darkness, Jacob falls into a deep, peaceful slumber, dreaming not of the monsters but instead about his grandfather as a boy, finding refuge at Cairnholm. Jacob realizes that this place didn’t just save his grandfather’s life, but also his dad’s life and his life, too.

In the morning, Jacob and his dad have breakfast and discuss their plan: they’ll go birdwatching first, then set out to find the children’s home. They walk away from the town as the fog clears, and Jacob sees how beautiful the hills and fields look in the light. He feels “energized and hopeful” there. He and his dad head down to a rocky beach to observe the birds, and Jacob quickly realizes that his dad could spend the whole day there. Jacob asks his dad to let him find someone to take him to the children’s home, and though Jacob’s dad knows Jacob’s mom wouldn’t be happy about this plan, he agrees to let Jacob go.

Kev isn’t at the bar, so Jacob goes into a nearby fish store to ask after someone who can take him. The shop owner offers up a boy named Dylan, who is about Jacob’s age. He leaves the shop with Dylan and a pair of rubber boots from the fishmonger, but anytime he tries to make small talk with Dylan, Dylan ignores him. On the way out of town, they run into one of Dylan’s friends, a boy who wears a tracksuit and fake gold chains and calls himself Worm. Worm explains that he and Dylan are the best rapping duo in Wales, starting up a beat and rapping a few lyrics to prove his point. Jacob doesn’t know how to react to this, so he just says that he prefers music with singing and more of a melody, which Worm dismisses.

Jacob, Dylan, and Worm wind over pastures, up hills, and through dense fog. Jacob even loses the other boys for a minute in the fog, but they wait for him to catch up. Soon after, they leave the path and find a small, boarded up house. Jacob knocks, and the unlatched door opens at his touch. He steps through into the darkness and quickly realizes that he is standing shin-deep in excrement. The other boys cackle outside, and Jacob is furious.

Jacob asks to go to the real house, and Dylan and Worm grow uneasy—Dylan thought Jacob was joking. Pointing up the path, Dylan tells Jacob to keep going past the bog and through the woods, and he can’t miss it. Jacob says that they’re supposed to go with him, but Worm says that this is as far as they can go, disappearing into the fog. After a few seconds, Jacob decides that he’ll go on alone, despite his dad’s instructions.

A bog stretches in front of Jacob as far as he can see, and there’s a path that looks like it’s been untouched for months or years. Jacob struggles past the bog, and suddenly the trees part—he can see the house clearly atop a hill. While his grandfather always described the house as a cheerful place, it looks cold and monstrous to Jacob, with broken windows, oddly angled walls, and trees invading the sides of the house. Jacob wonders how anyone could actually live there, but he knocks just the same. When there’s no answer, he circles the house looking for another way in and finds an open doorway with vines hanging across it. It terrifies Jacob, but he’s traveled too far to turn back.

Just inside the door, Jacob finds rotting coats and scattered toys. He’s nervous, testing his weight gingerly on the staircase, worried that something might jump out at him. Upstairs, he finds rooms with missing walls, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile this with the image of the house his grandfather painted. It is impossible that anyone could still be living there, and he leaves feeling no closer to answers than when he came.