In 2011, author Ransom Riggs released a novel about a strange island where special magical children lived with their caretaker, Miss Peregrine.
That bestselling novel, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, gets a film adaptation this year, as directed by Tim Burton.
A new trailer surfaced for the movie, which shows Penny Dreadful's Eva Green in the title role, along with a good explanation of the film's plot: a boy travels to a mysterious island to discover an orphanage that takes in children with unique abilities or certain features. There, not only does the boy discover magic, but he also finds his purpose: to protect the children on the island from the monsters that would prey on them.
The novel got its start from old photographs that Riggs discovered of unsmiling children in old, weird clothes. That sparked ideas about the peculiar children that eventually became the characters in the book.
"I started wondering about them, what their stories were," Riggs said to PBS Kids. "I couldn't know the truth, of course, since I had no idea who they were. So instead I made up stories about them, one after another, and those were the seeds of the characters – the peculiar children – that Jacob meets in the book."
Although the stories are for children, the novels set a creepy atmosphere, which is why Burton is a good choice for directing the movie. However, Riggs insisted that this doesn't mean that the books (or the film) are scary.
"I think creepiness is directly related to the unknown, and things that are mysterious (and a bit dark), and wondering about those things is fun and fascinating," said Riggs. "What's buried in the lost tomb? Are aliens real? Was it a ghost that just knocked over the picture frame in my room? What makes zombies get up and walk around when they're supposed to be dead? Creepy is better than just plain scary, because you can't look away from creepy – you want to know the truth!"
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children brings its magical brand of creepiness to theaters on Sept. 30.
