Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (#1) by Ransom Riggs (Read 3/7/15 to 3/14/15)

This was a book we read in my live book club, one of members is a library and she had multiple copies that were giveaways from the library, so we received some copies and assigned it to March.  It was supposedly marketed as supernatural and dark, a book "to keep you up at night."  If that is what you are looking for, you will be disappointed.  There are supernatural factors, but there is nothing dark or chilling, some of the pictures are a little creepy, but not enough to give you trouble sleeping.
The story revolves around Jacob, who finds his grandfather dying, in what first appears to be a wild dog attack.  His grandfather had filled his head with fantastic stories about magical children he had grown up with during WWII.  Children who had peculiar talents, such as levitating or growing gardens at a wish, were ubber strong, or made of bees.  As Jacob grew older, he began to realize these stories were made up, and his Grandfather slowly stopped telling them.  After his Grandfather's death, Jacob gets sent into a bit of a tailspin and goes looking for his Grandfather's past.  What he finds may is that his grandfather may not have been the liar he thought he was.
This was a great book, I loved that when a picture was mentioned, for the most part you turn the page and Bam there is the picture, it may have taken away a little of the reader's ability to imagine the characters, but the pictures were so integral to the story that the minor loss was not noticed. The book was originally intended to be a picture book featuring photographs Riggs had collected, but on the advice of an editor, he used the photographs as a guide from which to put together a narrative and a story was born.  I really like the concept and the integration of the pictures, Riggs states that he has searched many a flea market and garage sale for the pictures used, and he has many more which is good news for the sequels.  This is obviously a sequel, even if the second book hadn't been already released, the ending leaves no doubt there will be more books.
Jacob is a dis-likable character who grows into a likable character the further the story goes along.  There are lots of secrets and plots, yet the writing is simple and straightforward, making it easy to read and kept me interested without overtaking my life.  The children are endearing and varied, some are sweet, some are mean, but they are all individual characters,  There were many characters that were only mentioned briefly, but Riggs did a great job of having the children be their own characters and not being confused with each other, which may have been the help of the pictures, but it lends itself to good possibilities of the future books, maybe fleshing some of these characters out more.  I am looking forward to getting the second book.
As a side note, this book is better in the actual book format than electronic, I think it must have something to do with the pictures not translating as well when on an e-reader