When Ransom Riggs’s debut YA novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, was published in 2011, it flew to the tippy-top of the New York Times bestseller list, where it spent more than 100 weeks. Now the series boasts more than five million copies sold worldwide with translations in 40 languages. This year will be another big year for Riggs with the September release of the film, adapted by Tim Burton, with a star-studded cast including Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Ella Purnell, Judy Dench, Rupert Everett, and Allison Janney, among others.
As if that’s not enough, Riggs has a new book coming out that same month: Tales of the Peculiar, an illustrated collection of fairy tales set within the world of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children; that novel follows 16-year-old Jacob on his journey from a small town in Florida to a remote island off the coast of Wales. There he stumbles upon the ruins of Miss Peregrine’s home, and discovers the shocking fate of the children who lived there long ago—and may live there still. All of the books in the Miss Peregrine series are illustrated with dozens of haunting photographs that are part of the author’s voluminous collection of vintage photography.
At “Storytime with Ransom Riggs,” 11:30 a.m.–noon, you can listen to him read “The Splendid Cannibals,” one of the stories in the new collection. The reading takes place in the Penguin Random House Lit Lounge (booth 2409). Better yet, refreshments will be served. Want more Riggs? Posters for Tales of the Peculiar will be given away at Table 1 in booth 2433.
This article appeared in the May 14, 2016 edition of PW BEA Show Daily.
