"Hollow City" Reading Response

“Hollow City (the second novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children)”, written by Ransom Riggs  is an interesting novel that seems to especially have a lot discussing the idea of family and betrayal because the book is about a group of not quite human people who are slowly being hunted down and killed by another group of not quite but a lot more vicious human and they all don’t quite know who to trust. But the book mostly concerns the idea that maturity and wisdom has more to do with one’s personality than their physical age.

This idea is supported by several different moments in the text, especially concerning the age of the ‘peculiar children’. These children look like children but aren’t really as young as they look. This is due to the fact that they live hundreds of years in time loops, so they live the same day over again many times and have many different experiences and a life, but they still act much as though they were children rather than the very elderly people they are. For example, at one point in the book, Claire, the ”youngest” peculiar child, is especially showing herself to be childish when really, she is in fact older than many of the other children by several decades. “‘All right then, little one,’ Brownwyn said, ’But just one tale, and you’ve got to promise to  stop crying!” crying for a bedtime story does not at all seem to be  the behavior of someone who is many decades old. Also, Bronwyn calls her ‘little one’  when although Claire looks and acts younger, she is actually many years older than several of the other children.

This is also supported by situations such as when you realize that the children are actually sometimes decades or even centuries  older or younger than one another. An example of this is shown when one of them ‘ages forward’ or leaves their time loop and dies. An example of when they see a peculiar who aged forward: ”I had expected a withered corpse, but Mr. Crumbley looked perfectly intact and surprisingly young, perhaps forty or fifty years old, his black hair graying at the temples.” another example of the peculiar children finding a similar bunch  of 'peculiars' who aged forward, “Nestled under the clean, white covers were two men, seemingly asleep-and between them, two skeletons.” This particular scenes in the novel have  made  me wonder just how much older some of the children may be, compared to the others like with the two skeleltons and the two older men. They may have even appeared to be the same or similar ages before the children could see their actual ages  after they aged forward.

  Also, in bits where they state that some are older than others, “‘I’m a hundred and twelve!’ said Melina.” this is one instance in which one of the peculiars state their age when Melina appears to be sixteen.  Also when  Emma states,”’I’m  an old woman...She’s really a hag, an old crone hiding in the body of a young girl… and one day soon perhaps-I will die and return to dust.’” This is shows some of the instance in which she shows who she feels that she is, however even though she knows herself to be very old and she thinks of herself that way, she still acts as though she’s the age she appears.

In conclusion, how the people such as these children that have been children reliving the same day for hundreds of years and from this, one might think that they would really act and think in a more mature way like the old old people they are but this is not the case for they act just as immaturely as if they were the age they look to be. This makes a person wonder whether it is really someone’s experiences that make them sound older or wise, or more about the content of one’s personality and who they think they are. It also focuses a lot on the themes of war and whether bloodshed over an issue  is really always necessary, because they are traveling in the 1940s and although it is mostly a  fantasy based world, there are a few scenes in London during an air raid. most of all though the theme that most often appears is that of family and betrayal which as shown through the book are often very closely related.