Ransom riggs author biography samples

I first discovered Tahreh Mafi after her first book, Shatter Me jumped out of the library shelves. I read it once, then picked it up again along with the second book in the series, Unravel Me as well as her wonderful novellas, Destroy Me/ Fracture Me and I was extremely excited for the last book of her series, Ignite Me, by far the best of the 3 novels.

You may be wondering how to pronounce her name. Click here for a recording Mafi made to clear this up.

Tahereh Mafi makes use of the strike out in unusual ways, a unique idea that has inspired me personally to use it in my own writings. Overall, Mafi’s style is breathtaking and portrays the insecurities of the narrator, Juliet, quite well.

For example…..

Tahereh Mafi published Shatter Me at age 23, which is freaking insane, and she has so much talent, I am beyond excited for whatever else she decides to publish.

Books By Mafi:

These covers are just SO SO pretty!!

(See her website for more details.)

I learned that Tahereh Mafi and Ransom Riggs were married after a considerable amount of time being really confused. However, they are married, and adorable. #AuthorOTP

They met through fellow YA author and mutual friend Kami Garcia, who co-wrote Beautiful Creatures. Mafi and Riggs were formally introduced when they did a panel together.

And then they got married.

Ransom Riggs was originally a film major/photographer, and that fact is evident in his novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. This novel was inspired by odd and old photographs which the author collected, then used to inspire his story line. The second book, Hollow City  was released in January, and the next book is scheduled to release next year. (See here for more information.) His book, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is currently being produced as a film with director Tim Burton.

Books By Riggs:

Check out these articles for more information on

So I decided to take a break from reading Joyce’s Ulysses and read something more fun. Also, I was taking a short beach trip and was afraid I’d look awfully pretentious lying on the beach reading James Joyce. So this book was on my shelf and it seemed like a good choice for a beach read. I have to say that it was the perfect book, a quick read and enjoyable.

The book is kind of a dark fantasy novel, dealing with time loops, Lovecraftian monsters, mystical powers, and psychological trauma. While it sounds pretty morbid, it’s not quite as dark as it sounds. But what makes this book so cool, in my opinion, are the photographs included in the book. Riggs incorporates black-and-white pictures as part of the story, and there are quite a lot of them. It works really well. It is almost like a hybrid between a graphic novel and a “normal” book. It also sometimes feels like one of those old films that project a series of images to tell the story.

There is a lot of great symbolism in this book. So while it is a plot-driven story, there is much that you can think about if you choose. The first symbol worth considering is the island, where most of the story takes place. The island is a symbol for an isolated part of the psyche, a fixed point in the rippling sea of consciousness. And like our subconscious, the island is shrouded in mystery.

It was my grandfather’s island. Looming and bleak, folded in mist, guarded by a million screeching birds, it looked like some ancient fortress constructed by giants. As I gazed up at its sheer cliffs, tops disappearing in a reef of ghostly clouds, the idea that this was a magical place didn’t seem so ridiculous.

(p. 70)

The island has a bog, which is a point of transition between two dimensions. This represents a part of the psyche where it is possible to shift between states of consciousness. The bog is neither solid nor fluid, but a combination of the both, like a threshold. It

“I guess I had a lot of peculiar people in my life growing up,” says Ransom Riggs, author of the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series of novels. “Probably the most influential, and peculiar in her own way, was my grandmother.” A farmer’s daughter who became a farmer’s wife, she also went to university and was a teacher of Latin and French. “She infected me with a love of books.”

Riggs, 37, spoke from his home in Los Angeles about the upcoming Tim Burton film adaptation of his dark YA fantasy debut, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a surprise 2011 hit that spent more than two years on the bestseller list. We also talked about his new collection of short stories set in the same world, Tales of the Peculiar. Readers of the series, which includes two other bestselling novels, Hollow City and Library of Souls, will recognize that title: It’s the name of a book that the peculiar children consult for advice and comfort. Riggs says he wanted the new book to seem like an artifact from the peculiar world, an imaginary object that readers somehow discover in their real-world bookstores. 

The design of Tales of the Peculiar helps achieve this effect. Where you’d normally find the copyright details, instead there are instructions on things not to do while reading the book (whatever you do, don’t dog-ear the pages) and some unlikely production notes (“Printed in a nomad’s tent in the desert of Lop”). The foreword maintains this conceit: It’s written by Millard Nullings, the invisible boy at Miss Peregrine’s home. In it, Nullings explains why he decided to edit and annotate this edition of the Tales. The stories are not just folklore, he writes: “They are also the bearers of secret knowledge. Encoded within their pages are the locations of hidden loops, the secret identities of certain important peculiars, and other

2011 novel by Ransom Riggs

For the film, see Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (film).

Not to be confused with Missy Peregrym.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a 2011 contemporary fantasy debut novel by American author Ransom Riggs. The story is told through a combination of narrative and a mix of vernacular and found photography from the personal archives of collectors listed by the author.

This young adult book was originally intended to be a picture book featuring photographs Riggs had collected, but on the advice of an editor at Quirk Books, he used the photographs as a guide from which to put together a narrative. Riggs was a collector of photographs, but needed more for his novel. He met Leonard Lightfoot, a well-known collector at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, and was introduced to other collectors. The result was a story about a boy who follows clues from his grandfather's old photographs, tales, and his grandfather's last words which lead him on an adventure that takes him to a large abandoned orphanage on Cairnholm, a fictional Welsh island.

The book has been a New York Times best seller. It reached the No. 1 spot on the Children's Chapter Books list on April 29, 2012, after being on the list for 45 weeks, remaining there until May 20, when it dropped to the fourth spot on the list. The book received generally positive reviews for creative use of vintage photographs in the sepia style, surrealist form, characterization and setting. A sequel, Hollow City, was released on January 14, 2014.

Plot

As a child, Jacob Magellan Portman has been fascinated with his grandfather Abraham's stories about surviving as a Jew during World War II, running from man-eating monsters, and living with peculiar children in a secret home guarded by "a wise old bi