Ransom Riggs, most known for his YA series, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, neatly tied his hobbies of storytelling, photography, and videography into his work. The series features 16-year-old protagonist Jacob, who is sent to a desolate island and stumbles upon Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, where he begins to uncover various secrets about its previous inhabitants. Keep reading to learn how Riggs was able to combine all of his hobbies to craft a best-selling book series!
Who is Ransom Riggs?
Ransom Riggs, born to a wizened 200-year-old farm in Maryland, grew up around a host of “peculiar people” in his life. Chief among them was his grandmother, who reportedly gave him his love of reading and stories in general. He loved anything that opened his imagination to a different world — The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, anything by Tolkien, Stephen King’s Dark Tower series — anything at all. Reportedly he read The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at age 13, which is a long, winding saga about forced labor in Soviet Union–era camps. Perhaps this was where his love of history began?
Nurtured by his love of books, faraway worlds, and history, Ransom later developed a fascination with vintage photography, videography, and the telling of his own stories to amuse himself and his friends.
Photography
Ransom Riggs’s interest in vintage photographs was originally born out of a general interest for collecting things. Although he started out with the humble baseball card, Ransom quickly realized that he did indeed value older film, discovering how interesting and “emotive” the photos could be. And as he found more, his standards and interest grew side by side. This collection (along with a bit of nudging from his editors), laid the foundations for his fledgling project.
Videography
Almost naturally, with his interest in still film solidified, another hobby arrived in the form of videography. When he was slightly older, Riggs and his friends used a “half-broken video camera” to amuse themselves by filming short stories. They made up the stories themselves and used their surroundings as the setting. It was through this natural knack for telling tales that Ransom gained creative experience with keeping a tale going and interest alive.
Storytelling
Now, with a lifetime of creativity under his belt, along with an English Degree from Kenyon College, he began to get his actual foot in the door. After working and blogging for Mental Floss to gain more experience, he wrote The Sherlock Holmes Handbook in 2009 as tie-in for the film. It was his contacts here that noticed his collection of vintage photos and gave him the necessary nudge that culminated in the popular book series we have today.
Thus far, Riggs has written six books within the marvelous world of Miss Peregrine’s, and he is now beginning a new adventure under the title of Sunderworld, Vol I: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry. Once again, Riggs takes his mastery of combining the eerie and the ordinary with his interest in vintage remembrances set to film in an attempt to connect the present with the past — and, of course, the peculiar.
Whether or not Riggs continues on with the roots of Miss Peregrine’s themes forevermore (in some shape or form) or he furthers his niche with time and experience can hardly be predicted. What can be predicted, however, is that he will continue to enthrall his audiences with his clever world building abilities and his masses of fascinating characters.
Interested in learning more about Ransom Riggs? Click here.
Want something with a bit more ‘creep’ in it? Check out this list of YA and Older Horror books to see if something fits!
