Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Chapter 1 opens with Jacob creating a small-scale replica of the Empire State Building out of adult diaper boxes. Jacob explains that his uncles own the Smart Aid stores in the county and that it is tradition to work there to pay your dues. While at work, Jacob gets a call from his grandfather. Abraham is panicked. He is looking for a key to a crate of guns because he is worried someone is after him. Jacob explains to the reader that his grandfather’s mental decline has escalated over the past couple years. After talking to his grandfather, Jacob lets his father know what is going on, and then calls his friend Ricky to come get him so he can check on Abraham.

On the way there, Ricky and Jacob become lost in the neighborhood of similar looking houses. Once they find the correct street, Jacob notices all the house lights on the street are off and speculates that it is because everyone has gone north for the summer. Ricky and Jacob drive by a man watering the grass, and Jacob sees that the man is blind. He wonders why Abraham never mentioned a blind man living next door. At his grandfather’s house, Jacob looks through the rooms, but cannot find Abraham. The house appears to have been ransacked.

Ricky notices that the screen door has a long cut in it, and Jacob finds an abandoned flashlight in the backyard, pointed to the woods. Worried, Jacob runs through the woods to find his grandfather. Although the woods are difficult to navigate, he feels something guiding him. Jacob finds his grandfather face down in creepers with blood all over him. There are gashes to his midsection. Ricky and Jacob see a tentacle-mouthed monster in the trees. Jacob tries to comfort his grandfather, who tells him to “Go to the island….Here it’s not safe.” Abraham’s dying words to Jacob are “Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man’s grave. September third, 1940. Emerson—the letter. Tell them what happened, Yakob.”

After Abraham’s death, Jacob is “analyzed and interviewed” over the next couple months. Growing paranoia over the tentacle-mouthed monster keeps Jacob in the house. No one believes Jacob’s version of the events, and a police officer even asks his parents if they’ve taken him to see anyone. The police conclude that feral dogs killed Abraham. Ricky stops talking to Jacob, and Jacob’s parents take him to a psychiatrist named Dr. Golan. He starts lying to Dr. Golan about a recurring dream he is having. In the dream, Jacob is fighting monsters with his grandfather while his grandfather yells his dying words to him again and asks why he can’t understand. Dr. Golan tells Jacob to check out the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson to see if he can decode his grandfather’s last words. Jacob tries, but finds Emerson’s work dense. He determines that his grandfather would never have read Emerson.

When his family puts Abraham’s house up for sale, Jacob goes with his dad and Aunt Susie to clean the house. His dad and Aunt throw most of the stuff away, and Jacob begins to get angry about it. He heads to his grandfather’s room and finds the cigar box of odd photographs. After looking at the pictures, he sees how the photos were manipulated to look the way they do, and he takes the tin out to his dad and Aunt to throw away. “Now the truth seemed obvious: his last words had been just another sleight of hand, and his last act was to infect me with nightmares and paranoid delusions that would take years of therapy and metabolism-wrecking medications to rout out.” After the house cleaning, he suggests to Dr. Golan that his grandfather’s death is meaningless.

In an effort to cheer Jacob up, his mother insists on throwing him a sixteenth birthday party. She invites his family as well as Ricky, to whom he hadn’t spoken since just after his grandfather’s death. Jacob’s Uncle Bobby approaches him during the party and suggests he come to Tampa for the summer to get a better sense of the company he will one day inherit. Jacob does not like the idea but maintains a poker face. When it comes time to open presents, Jacob gets many material items, like a car and a camera. However, it is the last gift that means the most. He thinks the gift is from his Aunt Susie, but she claims that it is actually from his grandfather.

The gift is “an old hardback book, dog-eared and missing its dust jacket. It was The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.” His Aunt tells him that the book was on his grandfather’s desk with Jacob’s name on it. A letter falls out of the book. The letter is from Headmistress Alma Lefay Peregrine to “Abe,” his grandfather. A picture is also enclosed, which depicts a woman smoking a pipe. The letter ignites a passion in Jacob to pursue his grandfather’s story once more. He tries to convince his parents to let him go to Wales, and Dr. Golan encourages the idea. Jacob’s father is excited by the prospect as well because of a large proportion of one species of birds on the island. Before Jacob goes to Wales, he tries to call the only phone number on the island of Cairnholm and reaches the “piss hole.” He begins to have ominous feelings about the trip.

Chapter 3 skips ahead to the day Jacob and his father approach Cairnholm. On the ship, Jacob sees a “nautical graveyard” surrounding the island and notices many birds. His father tells him they are staying at a place called the Priest Home, but, once on the island, they are redirected from a church to a place called Priest Hole. On the way to the Priest Hole, he and his father pass a statue, The Waiting Woman, commemorating those lost at sea.

A man named Kev greets them at Priest Hole. To explain the name of the place, he tells a story about clergymen coming to the island to escape persecution and hiding under trapdoors under the floor. After resting, Jacob and his father head out in the morning to find the birds his father anxiously wants to study for his nature book. Once they find a good spot, Jacob leaves his father to look for the children’s house his grandfather once stayed at.

He heads to the fishmonger, who introduces him to his son, Dylan, and tells Jacob that Dylan can take him to the children’s home. On the way, they run into Worm, Dylan’s friend. Both Dylan and Worm are amateur rappers and try to show off their not-so-stunning rhymes to Jacob. As a joke, the boys take Jacob to a house filled with excrement, because they did not believe he actually wanted to go to the children’s home. However, once he explains he is serious, they point him in the right direction but refuse to go with him.

Jacob pushes through brush and trees to find the house. When he finds it, he notes that it is much different from what his grandfather described: rather than feeling happy, the house appears to be a monster. The house seems abandoned, but Jacob knocks on the door anyway, to no avail. Although he is scared, Jacob looks for a way in and finds a doorway without a door. Inside, he sees that the house is in shambles. Two rooms have missing walls through which the forest grows.