Previous
Intro
Growing up in present-day Florida, six-year-old Jacob Portman idolizes his grandfather, Abe. Abe’s past is fascinating: he grew up in a children’s home, performed in a circus, and fought in World War II. Some of Jacob’s favorite stories about his grandfather concern the home, where children with magical abilities lived freely in a kind of paradise, away from the rotting, tentacled monsters that were after them. Abe shows Jacob photos of the children: in them, one girl is levitating, and there’s a boy who can turn invisible. As Jacob grows up, he is disappointed to realize that his grandfather’s stories can’t be true and that the photos must be fake; then he gets angry with his grandfather, particularly because he’s been bullied at school for believing the stories. Later, Jacob’s dad reveals the stories’ origins: his grandfather was the only member of his family to escape the Nazi regime in Poland, finding shelter in a Welsh orphanage. When he learns this, Jacob is ashamed for envying his grandfather’s life and doesn’t ask about it again.
By the time Jacob is 15, he is pretty unhappy—he has few friends, doesn’t get along well with his parents, and feels like he’s being forced into a predetermined path where he’ll have to work at his mom’s family’s drug store chain. But one day, he receives a terrified phone call from his grandfather, who says the monsters are after him. Abe has been declining mentally, and at first, Jacob thinks this is just another episode. But when Jacob arrives at his grandfather’s house to check on him, he discovers Abe in the woods with huge gashes in his chest. Before he dies, he gives Jacob instructions: “Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man's grave. September third, 1940.” He also mentions a letter. Jacob catches a glimpse of exactly the kind of monster his grandfather always described: rotting flesh, tentacles spooling out of its mouth, and terrifying.
Following his grandfather’s death, Jacob is constantly anxious and has recurring nightmares about the monsters. Despite seeing a psychiatrist named Dr. Golan, he doesn’t seem to get any better. He also fights with his parents, particularly his dad, who always felt that Abe was a distant father. One day, however, Jacob discovers the letter his grandfather was referring to, which was sent 15 years earlier from a woman named Miss Peregrine. Miss Peregrine ran the children’s home that his grandfather lived in, located on an island off the coast of Wales. Jacob convinces his dad to take a trip to Wales over the summer so that he can find the children’s home, and his dad agrees—particularly because his dad is an amateur ornithologist and wants to write a book about the bird life there.
On the island, which is very secluded and rustic, few people know about the children’s home. Jacob soon discovers why: it’s on the very edge of the island past a dangerous bog, it’s half-destroyed, and it’s largely overrun by nature. He learns that a bomb was dropped on the home during World War II, but this confuses Jacob because the letter from Miss Peregrine is only 15 years old. He searches the house and finds more photos like the ones his grandfather always showed him. Then, suddenly, a set of children approach, asking for Abe—they are the children who appeared in the photographs. Jacob chases one girl through an old cairn (a tomb), but when he comes out the other side, he soon realizes he’s been transported back to September 3, 1940. The girl, Emma (who can conjure fire with her hands), is suspicious of Jacob, thinking that he’s a wight, and she and another boy named Millard (who’s invisible) take him back to Miss Peregrine’s home.
At the house, Jacob sees it in its proper glory, with many children with special abilities playing around the beautiful grounds. Miss Peregrine, the headmistress, explains that they are “peculiar,” meaning they have magical talents. She is also a special peculiar known as an “ymbryne”—she can manipulate time and shapeshift into a bird. Miss Peregrine created a time loop for the children, so they only experience September 3, 1940, over and over, and they never age. The time loop not only protects them from the bomb, but from common people who think the unusual children are evil and might target them. Jacob, in turn, tells Miss Peregrine that his grandfather is dead. This upsets Emma deeply, as they were sweethearts when Abe lived at the orphanage. Jacob stays for dinner but returns to his time by going through the cairn once more, and he lies to his dad about what he found at the orphanage.
Over the next few days, Jacob goes back and forth between 1940 and the present, spending more time getting to know the children while also growing more adept at lying to his dad. Jacob enjoys playing and relaxing with the other kids, but he soon realizes how boring it would be to live one day over and over, never aging. Additionally, Jacob develops a budding romance with Emma while also learning about some of the more disturbing things about the house. For example, they keep the dead body of a boy named Victor in an upstairs room, while another boy, Enoch, has the peculiar ability to revive him by reanimating animal hearts. And back in the present, strange things start to happen: a mysterious birder appears, farmers realize that several sheep have been killed in the night, and the museum curator, Martin, is discovered dead in the ocean.
One day, another ymbryne named Miss Avocet arrives at the home, explaining that hollowgast and wights are planning a coordinated attack against the ymbrynes. Miss Peregrine explains to Jacob that hollowgast are peculiars who tried to use time loops to live forever. Their experiment went horribly wrong, causing a massive explosion, and they were left with rotting flesh and tentacles for tongues. Hollowgast can live for thousands of years and constantly hunger for peculiar flesh. Very few people can see them, but a few peculiars—Jacob and Abe included—can. Jacob realizes that this is what he saw the night Abe was killed—the things that still haunt his dreams. When a hollowgast eats enough peculiars, it turns into a wight. Wights look human except for their eyes, which are completely white, and their sole purpose is to acquire more peculiars for hollowgast to eat. Miss Peregrine asks Jacob to keep a lookout for anything or anyone suspicious who might have arrived on the island.
At this, Jacob remembers the suspicious birder and Martin’s dead body. With Jacob and Emma’s help, Enoch revives Martin, who tries to describe what killed him. Just as they are interviewing Martin, the birder appears with a gun and reveals that he is Dr. Golan, Jacob’s psychiatrist. He has been watching Jacob and Abe for years, hoping they would lead him to a place with more peculiars—and now Jacob has. Dr. Golan sets a hollowgast on the children, and though they’re able to escape it, they soon discover that Dr. Golan has kidnapped Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet. It seems that the hollows and wights are still hoping to use time loops to achieve true immortality.
Jacob, Emma, a girl with incredible strength named Bronwyn, and Millard then follow Dr. Golan to the nearby lighthouse, where he is keeping Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet in a cage in their bird forms. As the children try to retrieve the birds, Dr. Golan shoots Millard and throws the birdcage from the lighthouse and into the ocean. Jacob is then able to grab Dr. Golan’s gun and shoot him, and he’s surprised by his own courage. He and Emma dive after the birdcage, but suddenly a U-Boat surfaces from the water and a wight grabs the cage. Still, Miss Peregrine was able to escape the cage in her bird form, and Emma and Jacob scoop her up and bring her back to shore.
Without Miss Peregrine to reset the time loop, the bomb strikes the children’s home. Fortunately, the rest of the children escaped, but the house is completely destroyed, and Miss Peregrine seems stuck in her bird form. The children decide to go after Miss Avocet, hoping that another ymbryne might be able to fix their time loop. Jacob realizes that he wants to go with the children to protect them from the hollowgast—that they’re his family now. He says goodbye to his dad and returns to 1940, knowing that he may never be able to go back to his own time period again. It’s September 4th, 1940, for the first time in a long time, and Jacob and the other children feel more alive than ever.
