Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children(88)

I did, too.

*

I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was. Likewise, I never imagined that home might be something I would miss. Yet as we stood loading our boats in the breaking dawn, on a brand new precipice of Before and After, I thought of everything I was about to leave behind—my parents, my town, my once-best-andonly friend—and I realized that leaving wouldn’t be like I had imagined, like casting off a weight. Their memory was something tangible and heavy, and I would carry it with me.

And yet my old life was as impossible to return to as the children’s bombed house. The doors had been blown off our cages.

Ten peculiar children and one peculiar bird were made to fit in just three stout rowboats, with much being jettisoned and left behind on the dock. When we’d finished, Emma suggested that one of us say something—make a speech to dedicate the journey ahead—but no one seemed ready with words. And so Enoch held up Miss Peregrine’s cage and she let out a great screeching cry. We answered with a cry of our own, both a victory yell and a lament, for everything lost and yet to be gained.

Hugh and I rowed the first boat. Enoch sat watching us from the bow, ready to take his turn, while Emma in a sunhat studied the receding island. The sea was a pane of rippled glass spreading endlessly before us. The day was warm, but a cool breeze came off the water, and I could’ve happily rowed for hours. I wondered how such calm could belong to a world at war.

In the next boat, I saw Bronwyn wave and raise Miss Peregrine’s camera to her eye. I smiled back. We’d brought none of the old photo albums with us; maybe this would be the first picture in a brand new one. It was strange to think that one day I might have my own stack of yellowed photos to show skeptical grandchildren—and my own fantastic stories to share.

Then Bronwyn lowered the camera and raised her arm, pointing at something beyond us. In the distance, black against the rising sun, a silent procession of battleships punctuated the horizon.

We rowed faster.





All the pictures in this book are authentic, vintage found photographs, and with the exception of a few that have undergone minimal postprocessing, they are unaltered. They were lent from the personal archives of ten collectors, people who have spent years and countless hours hunting through giant bins of unsorted snapshots at flea markets and antiques malls and yard sales to find a transcendent few, rescuing images of historical significance and arresting beauty from obscurity—and, most likely, the dump. Their work is an unglamorous labor of love, and I think they are the unsung heroes of the photography world.


What follows is a list of all the photographs and their respective collectors.


The Invisible Boy (Robert Jackson) The Levitating Girl (Yefim Tovbis) Boy Lifting Boulder (Robert Jackson) The Painted Head (Robert Jackson) Abe Napping (Robert Jackson) The Girl in the Bottle (Robert Jackson) The Floating Baby (Peter Cohen) The Boy-Faced Dog (Robert Jackson) The Contortionist (Robert Jackson) The Masked Ballerinas (Robert Jackson) Miss Peregrine’s Silhouette (Robert Jackson) Boy in Bunny Costume (Robert Jackson)

Girls at the Beach (The Thanatos Archive) The Reflecting Pool (Peter Cohen) A Boy and His Bees (Robert Jackson) The Snacking Ballerinas (Robert Jackson) Emma in the Dark (Muriel Moutet) The Cairn Tunnel (Martin Isaac) Fighter Planes (Robert Jackson) Miss Peregrine (The author) Miss Finch (Roselyn Leibowitz) Miss Avocet and Her Wards (Julia Lauren)

Miss Finch’s Loop (Roselyn Leibowitz) Claire’s Golden Curls (David Bass) Our Beautiful Display (Robert Jackson) Bronwyn Bruntley (Robert Jackson) Girl with Chicken (John Van Noate) Jill and the Beanstalk (Robert Jackson) A Follower of Fashion (Robert Jackson) Miss Nightjar Takes All the Hard Cases (The author) Enoch’s Dolls (David Bass)

Victor (Robert Jackson) My Bombshell (Peter Cohen) Peeling Spuds (Robert Jackson) Emma’s Silhouette (Robert Jackson) This is Why (Robert Jackson) A Hunting Trip (The author) Department Store Santa (The author) Victorian Dentist (The Thanatos Archive) Marcie and the Wight (Robert Jackson) The Vision (Peter Cohen) Caw Caw Caw (Roselyn Leibowitz)

Abe and Emma (Robert Jackson) We Rowed Faster (Robert Jackson)





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I would like to thank:

Everyone at Quirk, especially Jason Rekulak, for his seemingly endless patience and many excellent ideas; Stephen Segal, for his close readings and sharp insights; and Doogie Horner, certainly the most talented book designer/stand-up comic working today.

Mom, to whom I owe everything, obviously.

All my photo collector friends: the very generous Peter Cohen; Leonard Lightfoot, who introduced me around; Roselyn Leibowitz; Jack Mord of the Thanatos Archive; Steve Bannos; John Van Noate; David Bass; Martin Isaac; Muriel Moutet; Julia Lauren; Yefim Tovbis; and especially Robert Jackson, in whose living room I spent many pleasant hours looking at peculiar photographs.

Chris Higgins, whom I consider a leading authority on time travel, for always taking my calls.

Laurie Porter, who took the photo of me that appears on the next page of this book while we were exploring some weird abandoned shacks in the Mojave desert.





A Conversation

with Ransom Riggs

Ransom Riggs grew up in Florida but now makes his home in the land of peculiar children—Los Angeles. Along the way he earned degrees from Kenyon College and the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. His first novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, debuted at #5 on the New York Times Best-Seller List. He recently sat down with Quirk Books’ creative director Jason Rekulak to discuss its peculiar origins.