I am going to be entirely honest and tell you that this book’s success with me and indeed the main reason I read it, were the many pictures that proliferated its pages. The pictures created atmosphere, deepened the mystery and constructed this sense of faux authenticity that worked to reel me in and keep me reading. I am taking this class on New Media for Children and while, obviously, books are traditional media, I think the way we tell stories is changing to accommodate the changing mediums we can tell stories in. I don’t care what anyone else says otherwise, physical books are always going to matter and exist. Yes, I understand the convenience of ebooks etc but human beings are hoarders by nature. And technology fails. One blip and you lose your entire library. But with traditional books? Barring a fire and other disasters of that nature, they last. They are not just comforts for contemporary people, they are what we leave as proof of our existence.Wow, sorry about the way I went off on a tangent. Ransom Riggs novel is a delight to read. It is. And the pictures make it even more awesome read. I had no idea that the main character was a boy, just as well, otherwise I would have been reluctant to read it. But I needn’t have worried. Jacob is not a difficult (read: alien in thought and action) character to read and relate to. He is surprisingly more relatable than those melodramatic YA female protagonists who spend 80% of their time bemoaning their less than stellar physical qualities and the other twenty percent smooching/mooning the love of their lives and in between breaks prove their “she’s the one” prophecies and kill the monster. Wow, I’m bitter. Anyway.The writing is dense from the very beginning but it starts to pay off almost immediately when the conflicts are set up and the relationship dynamics come into play. We’ve all read about poor little rich girls but this is the first time we, well I, read about a poor little rich boy. Jacob’s contentions with his parents, the matter of fact way he relates his mother’s eagerness to get her husband and child out of the house, his father’s inability to stick to a story – all of these make for intriguing read. Human drama without melodrama. The paranormal stuff, honestly, was a bit more difficult to swallow and the pictures helped here.I am still a bit squeamish about the romance because to me it does seem like the love interest is just replacing the grandfather with Jacob and she is way older than Jacob but hey, if Edward could do it, why not her? I liked how the children band up in the end – it gives me a sort of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys vibe without that annoying goody Wendy popping around to destroy their groove. I liked the book and though I’m late to the party, I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a surprisingly light read.
