Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

I first heard about Ransom Riggs when award-winning author and vlogger John Green shared a video Riggs had posted about his photograph collection. It appears that these photographs played some role in inspiring Riggs to write this book for young adults*.

Jacob is a teenager who was fascinated by photographs of extraordinary children his grandfather showed him when he was young. As Jacob gets older, he dismisses the stories surrounding these photographs as mere fantasy and accepts his ordinary life as the way things really are.

When his grandfather is killed in the woods behind his house, Jacob thinks he sees one of the tentacled monsters that were the villains of those stories. Ensuing nightmares lead to visits to a psychiatrist and a diagnosis of acute stress disorder. To resolve Jacob’s continuing questions, he talks his parents into letting him visit Cairnholm Island, the setting of his grandfather’s stories of peculiar children threatened by monsters.

Readers will get drawn into Jacob’s journey to seek the truth. What he finds is an intriguing and dangerous world with some very peculiar children indeed. Their meeting will cause irreversible changes to the worlds of both Jacob and the children.

• Book trailer 
• Information and the first three chapters

 *Disturbing violence and some profanity

Tangerine by Edward Bloor

Paul Fisher is legally blind and an outstanding soccer goalie. He’s been told that he stared at an eclipse too long but has no memory of how his eyes were damaged. He fears his older brother Eric while their parents seem oblivious to any threat.  These contradictions pulled me right into Tangerine by Edward Bloor.

When the family moves to Florida, their new town of Tangerine adds to the mystery: the continual muck fires, disappearing koi, a student struck by lightning, and a massive sinkhole.  Paul finds his way around these hazards as he joins the soccer team at Tangerine Middle School - the school on the other side of the figurative tracks from his middle class subdivision.

Paul is a clear-sighted and honorable character surrounded by a family absorbed in their own concerns and dreams.  The mysteries and citizens of Tangerine provide a complex and rich world where Paul can seek his own place and perhaps a clearer view into his own past.

Author site: http://www.edwardbloor.net/b_tangerine.aspx