Take a peek into Ransom Riggs' upcoming 'Tales of the Peculiar'

Mention the word "peculiar" to a YA fan, and they'll immediately imagine an eerie photograph -- or maybe a child with supernatural powers. That's the impact of Ransom Riggs' bestselling series Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

The books follow a group of "Peculiars" -- people with uncanny powers, like invisibility or firestarting -- who hide in time loops from ghostly nemeses. 

This fall, the first novel's film adaptation (directed by Tim Burton) hits theaters. A few weeks before that, fans can continue reading about Riggs' magical world in Tales of the Peculiar, a collection of fairytales from within the Miss Peregrine's universe. Below is a sneak peek into the book, to be released on September 3rd (Loop Day, a holiday for Peculiars). 

First, take a look at Tales' chapter listing, which holds some clues for fans of the series:

The Splendid Cannibals

The Fork-Tongued Princess

The First Ymbryne

The Woman Who Befriended Ghosts

Cocobolo

The Pigeons of Saint Paul’s

The Girl Who Could Tame Nightmares

The Locust

The Boy Who Could Hold Back the Sea

The Tale of Cuthbert

While the original book series was based on creepy photographs discovered by the author, the aesthetic of Tales of the Peculiar was far more ancient. Riggs enlisted British artist Andrew Davidson to create woodcut drawings for the stories, four of which can be seen exclusively here. 

MashReads spoke to Riggs and Davidson about the project.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The Tales originated as a book that's mentioned in the second installment of the series, Hollow City. Invisible Peculiar Millard lugs the stories on his adventures, finding guidance in the knowledge hidden within.

"I didn’t actually have to write any of the stories when I was writing Hollow City, but I just really wanted to," Riggs explained. "There’s two stories that they read, and I sort of included the whole story in dialogue as the characters read them. I found it so much fun to delve into the fairytale type language and just another mode of storytelling. From the moment I cooked up those two stories in Hollow City I wanted to write more."

When it came to writing those other stories, Riggs was excited to expand his fictional world. "Some of them I had thought about a little bit beforehand. There’s an origin story of where ymbrynes [the magical guardians in the Peculiar world] came from. I had been toying with those ideas for a little while.

"But most of them I just dreamed up while I was writing the book. Once you go into that fairytale mode, it was really permission for me to explore my own world. 

"The stories go all over the history of the Peculiars, all different times, all different places and countries and cultures. It was a lot of fun to spread my wings and explore parts of the Peculiar universe.”

You don't need to be a fan of the original series to enjoy this book, which Riggs says can stand alone. But Miss Peregrine devotees will find lots of references hidden in its pages.

“Millard, who edits and annotates the Tales, is constantly interjecting little footnotes throughout the stories about how certain things relate," Riggs said. "So there’s always little contextualizing details that tie these fairytales into the quote 'real' Peculiar world.” 

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Unlike the Miss Peregrine series, which was based on creepy photos Riggs found, Tales has an older aesthetic.

“Of course, the old Tales of the Peculiar -- that have been with the peculiars for hundreds of years prior to the invention of photography -- wouldn’t have photos,” Riggs explained. 

“I wasn’t thinking of anything specific other than something drawn by hand, because I knew it would be ancient... And then when it came time to think about what those [illustrations] might actually be, I thought woodcut engravings would be perfect."

Riggs' dream artist? "I knew Andrew [Davidson]’s work from the UK adult editions of the Harry Potter books, and said ‘something like this would be great! Of course he’s too cool and fancy, we could never get him. But something like him.”

In the end, Riggs' editor came back with the good news: Davidson was in. "It could not have worked out better," he said.

Davidson was given a lot of freedom to create the art for the stories: "I was allowed pretty much full rein on this one. But like with a solo violinist it’s helpful to have someone to conduct your direction and bring out the best." And Riggs' writing was quite the conductor.

"As for the inspiration, that came out of Ransom's remarkable text," Davidson said. "It’s not often I get the chance to work with such quality. In the past I have been more than fortunate to have worked with the late Ted Hughes and more recently JK Rowling, but I found this book both intriguing and inspiring as well as hugely and wonderfully challenging."

Davidson's art is unique in that he creates woodcuts that eventually become illustrations. He described his process:

"All the images for the book are wood engravings, a process which requires a design to be transposed onto a piece of English Box or Lemon wood. The design, which is of course back to front, is then cut into the block using very small engraving tools.

This method of image making was familiar when illustrations and type were run together on a letterpress printing machine in the early days of newspapers and periodicals. Each mark made on the block shows up white, so with stippling, cross hatching and cutting through the wood with different pressures, an image is built up.

When this is done, the block -- which in this case is about 9” by 6” -- is first carefully inked and then placed in my 1859 Albion hand press and printed onto handmade pager. A block this size would normally take about nine days to cut."

The result is a gorgeous piece of art.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

You can see all of Davidson's art, and Riggs' stories, this September.