“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” is one of the most well known books at Cherokee High School. Every student read about Jacob’s adventures during the summer of 2016-2017, but now they can watch him explore the mystery of his grandfather’s hidden world on the big screen instead.

In October 2016, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” was opened in movie theaters with dramatic music and glimpses of the characters that students read about all summer. Directed by famous Tim Burton, the movie is two hours and and seven minutes long, and can be described as a fantasy/paranormal based film. For anybody looking for an adventure, this movie is the one to see.

However, there is one controversial opinion that seems to be bothering many avid readers of Ransom Riggs: Why was the plot of the movie changed so much? An example of this is the idea of Emma Bloom (Jacob’s love interest) and her peculiarity. In the book, Emma’s power was that she was able to conjure fire at will, and shape it any way she desired. However, in the movie, Emma has levitation powers, which was a peculiarity that the character Olive was supposed to have instead. There were many other massive plot changes in this movie, and as one reviewer says, “This might be more enjoyable if you haven’t read the novel, though I suspect that it wouldn’t be by much.”

As a reader of the book and a viewer of the movie, I have to say that the plot changes did bother me.  An attribute like Emma’s peculiarity were crucial to her character and important in the following books in this series as well. One of the most irritating things to see as a reader is one of your favorite books being turned into a movie or TV show only to have the plot and characters changed drastically. I feel that it is not fair to the author, who created this story, and to the people who have never read the books and never know what the original story was really like. Overall, though this movie was created well with a pleasingly creepy aesthetic, there is definitely room for improvement in “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.”