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ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: Sunderworld, Vol. 1
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.ransomriggs.com/
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 394
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born February 3, 1979, in MD; married Tahereh Mafi (a writer), 2013; children: Layla.
EDUCATION:Kenyon College, B.A. (English); University of Southern California, master’s degree (film).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, filmmaker, and blogger. Writer and director of short films Spaceboy and Portable Living Room, both 2006.
AVOCATIONS:Photography, playing guitar, cycling, travel, scuba diving.
AWARDS:Silver Award for short film, WorldFest Houston, 2007, for Portable Living Room.
WRITINGS
Author of short films Spaceboy, 2006, and Portable Living Room, 2006. Author of film script “Black River.” Contributor to anthologies, including Mental Floss: Scatterbrained, edited by Will Pearson, Mangesh Hattikudur, and John Green, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006; and Mental Floss Presents In the Beginning: From Big Hair to the Big Bang, edited by Mary Carmichael, Pearson & Hattikudur, 2007. Contributor of foreword to The Art of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: A Tim Burton Film, by Leah Gallo, introduction by Tim Burton, Quirk Books (Philadelphia, PA), 2016. Contributor to Mental Floss magazine and to travel blog Strange Geographies.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was adapted for audiobook, read by Jesse Bernstein, Random House Audio, 2011, and adapted to film by Twentieth Century-Fox, directed by Tim Burton, 2016. “Black River” was optioned for film by Black Forest Film Group.
SIDELIGHTS
For most people, a set of someone else’s old photographs might be a short-lived curiosity, something to browse before dumping in the trash. For author and filmmaker Ransom Riggs, however, these kinds of “found” photographs inspired a tantalizing question: What if? What if the boy shown covered in bees had them living inside of him? What if the person with a face painted on the back of his head actually had a second mouth there? What if a young man heard wild stories about such photos and discovered they were actually true? Riggs answers these questions and more in his first book for young readers, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and he shares other found photos in his large-format book Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past.
Riggs was born in rural Maryland but moved to Florida at age five. In addition to attending a school for the gifted and talented, he “grew up writing stories and making videos in the backyard with my friends,” as he recalled on his home page. With aspirations of becoming a scriptwriter and film director, Riggs spent three summers at the University of Virginia Young Writer’s Workshop. There, as he would later recall, “I met so many great, brilliant people, and it convinced me that it was possible to make a life for myself as a writer.”
Armed with an English degree from Kenyon College, Riggs moved to the West Coast and enrolled at the University of Southern California’s School of Film and Television. He made several short films, including Spaceboy, in which a reclusive teen hopes to make contact with aliens and escape Earth until his brother’s girlfriend makes him reconsider his affinity with the rest of the human race. The film’s success at festivals led to distribution on iTunes and more film opportunities, including online shorts and book trailers.
Riggs’s other passion, writing, led him to write and blog for Mental Floss, a magazine/website devoted to interesting but little-known facts. His first book-length work, The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: The Methods and Mysteries of the World’s Greatest Detective, was created to coincide with a 2009 feature motion picture featuring the famous sleuth created by British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Photography had intrigued Riggs since he received a camera as a boy, and he became interested in collecting old photographs, often finding little treasures at flea markets. He started to specialize in collecting photos with an eerie edge to them, especially those featuring children. One day he showed some to his editor, who suggested that he should write a novel making them part of a larger story. Envisioning a home full of these “peculiar” children, Riggs searched through his own collection of 1,500 to 2,000 photos and also worked with other collectors to come up with the perfect pictures to illustrate his story. Sometimes a particularly “peculiar” photo would inspire him, as he explained to Susan Rife in Arts Sarasota. “The more story I wrote, the more pictures I found, and the pictures influenced where I wanted to go with the story sometimes. It was a really interesting process, kind of like a puzzle, only I could make up all the pieces.”
As Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman describes some of the unique and unsettling photographs his grandfather Abe collected and also retells the man’s stories of the young subjects he claimed were his peers in a Welsh home for “peculiar children.” Although Jacob once believed his grandfather’s stories, he now questions whether they were instead a way for the young Abe Portman to cope with the horrors he encountered as a child growing up during World War II. After his grandfather is killed—by a gruesome monster only Jacob can see—the teen becomes more convinced in the truth of these stories; his parents, of course, fear that their son is having a psychological breakdown. Jacob almost agrees with their assessment, but then he finds a letter from Miss Alma LeFay Peregrine, his grandfather’s old headmistress, as well as Abe Portman’s final message to “follow the bird” and uncover the mystery hidden in his past. Jacob convinces his father to take him to Wales, where he finds the truth behind Abe Portman’s photos and the not-so-crazy stories that accompanied them.
Reviewing Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, several critics praised Riggs’s original use of found photographs to create a unique story. “The author’s ability to use the photos to play with the reader’s imagination, while still holding the tension of the plot, is extraordinary,” Claire Cameron stated in her review of the novel for the Toronto Globe & Mail. “In Riggs’ hands,” Cameron added, “the use of found art is an elegant tool that reinforces the message of the book.” In Library Journal, Laurel Bliss described the novel as “an original work that defies categorization,” while Voice of Youth Advocates contributor Barbara Allen considered it “an edge-of-your-seat adventure.” Although Booklist reviewer Michael Cart faulted the pacing in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children , he noted that the photos “expand the oddness of the proceedings” and make the book “even more intriguing.” Readers “will find the photos either totally cool or kind of creepy, but either way they feed the book’s atmospherics,” Marjorie Kehe asserted in her review of the novel for the Christian Science Monitor, the critic adding that Riggs’s children’s-book debut is “one of the more fantastically entertaining young adult books of the summer.” “An enjoyable, eccentric read,” according to a Publishers Weekly critic, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children “is distinguished by well-developed characters, a believable Welsh setting, and some very creepy monsters.”
With the first novel leaving the action in suspense, Riggs continues the “Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children” series with Hollow City. Having fought off various monsters, Jacob, his friend Emma, and the supernaturally powered peculiars must travel along perilous time loops, with wights and hollowgasts hot on their tails, in hopes of getting to London. If they cannot find a cure for her, Miss Peregrine will be permanently stuck in her avian form. Once again, found photographs are used to eerily illustrate the story. In School Library Journal, Billy Parrott affirmed, “This book is perfectly paced, suspenseful, and scary. It is dark and dreadful but also humorous and touching.” A Kirkus Reviews writer noted that the photographs “add distinctly creepy notes (even when the subject is supposedly comical)” to Hollow City.
The peculiar adventures continue in Library of Souls, in which Jacob and Emma must infiltrate enemy territory, Devil’s Acre, in order to save Miss Peregrine and the captured peculiars. Parrott, in School Library Journal, called Library of Souls “thrilling and satisfying,” as the tone of the narrative “covers the spectrum from humorous to suspenseful to downright terrifying.” In Booklist, Julia Smith declared that “satisfying answers are given to long-standing questions about peculiardom.” The popularity of Riggs’s “Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children” series has increased with the additional publication of graphic-novel versions of the stories, with art by Cassandra Jean—Parrott, in School Library Journal, observed that the “loose yet detailed and evocative illustrations serve the narrative well”—as well as the release of the major motion-picture adaptation directed by Tim Burton.
Riggs expands the world of the peculiars further with Tales of the Peculiar, a real-life version of a book of stories found in the original series, as authored by a peculiar and former ward of Miss Peregrine’s named Millard Nullings. The ten legendary fables, populated with ghosts, princesses, cannibals, giants, and other creatures, tell of peculiars encountering challenges in their dealings with ordinary humans, other peculiars, and their own special powers. As Sue Roe describes them in School Librarian, the tales “convey moral messages … within a compellingly strange fantasy world full of macabre and sometimes gruesome detail.” Etching-style illustrations by Andrew Davidson and an ornate book design lend to the volume’s appearance as a fantastic book of ancient lore. In School Library Journal, Parrott observed that for fans of the original series, Tales of the Peculiar “will provide new insight into many of the events in Peculiar history.” A Children’s Bookwatch reviewer called the volume “consistently compelling and unfailingly entertaining,” while a Pubishers Weekly writer declared that the stories are “alternately droll, somber, and a bit horrific.”
Riggs starts the peculiars’ story anew in the next addition to the “Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children” series, A Map of Days. The wights have been defeated, and now, hoping to blend back in with ordinary society, the peculiars have come to visit Jacob in Florida. When they stumble upon Abe’s secret bunker, Jacob learns of his grandfather’s history hunting hollows and is inspired to set out on a mission to save a powerful but endangered peculiar named Noor. A Wild West ambience holds sway as Jacob and friends must navigate past lawless gangs and syndicates, with the Ymbryne Council and the Organization looming in the background. A Kirkus Reviews writer observed that the novel offers “a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles.” In Booklist, Julia Smith affirmed that with A Map of Days, Riggs “reinvigorates his best-selling series, expanding the peculiar world and history, while drawing parallels to contemporary hot-button issues.”
The fifth and penultimate book in the “Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children” series, The Conference of the Birds, picks up after the events of A Map of Days, which forms the American-based trilogy of the last three books of the series. Jacob is helping newly contacted peculiar child Noor Pradesh reach operative V, but V doesn’t ever want to be found. Noor is being hunted because she is part of an ancient prophecy that predicts the apocalypse. Jacob and Noor must navigate tension between the American and European peculiar factions, find V, save Noor, and save the future of peculiardom. Martin Mulrooney wrote on Alternative Magazine that the series “is now perfectly positioned to go out with a great big peculiar bang.”
The Desolations of Devil’s Acre: Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, the sixth book and epic conclusion of the series, finds Jacob and Noor back where everything began—his grandfather’s house in Florida. The two reunite with Miss Peregrine and the peculiar children in Devil’s Acre to provide a last stand against the terrifying Hollowgasts and Wights, and Caul, who is amassing an army to bring about the apocalypse. The children’s only hope is to decipher the location of the meeting place in the prophesy. In an interview online in Publishers Weekly, Riggs explained why he thinks monsters and horror appeal to children: “These fears live in the back of our minds every day, and horror fiction is a way of bringing them out of the shadows and facing them—thus defanging them a bit.”
In 2022, Riggs published Miss Peregrine’s Museum of Wonders: An Indispensable Guide to the Dangers and Delights of the Peculiar World for the Instruction of New Arrivals, a handbook to the “Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children” series, with information on the story’s history, monsters, places, time loops, and names. It also describes the peculiar abilities, practices, evil deeds, and secrets of its characters. As expected, the book contains weirdly created antique photographs. A writer in Kirkus Reviews called the book “a keepsake that may fill in a few blanks even for devoted fans of the series.”
[OPEN NEW]
Having brought the “Miss Perergine” series to a close, Riggs launched a new series entitled “Sunderworld.” The first installment had the lengthy title Sunderworld Vol. 1: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry. The titular protagonist is a seventeen-year-old living around Los Angeles who starts seeing strange phenomena: a trapdoor that glows in a parking lot, a raccoon with its tail on fire that follows Leopold around, and a parking meter that takes teeth instead of coins. Leopold realizes that these visions are all from his favorite television show, Max’s Adventures in Sunderworld, and he becomes obsessed with the show when he needs to grieve after his mother’s death. When he and his best friend Emmet later discover Sunder is real, they have to do what they can to save it.
In Booklist, Rebecca Reitemeier wrote, “Leopold’s offbeat Sunderworld is a little grim and a little broken, but the magic is real and will stick with you.” She appreciated how the story “balances hope, disillusionment, and perseverance.” A writer in Kirkus Reviews called the narrative a “fully imagined fantastical world with compelling characters and a nail-biting cliffhanger.” They particularly enjoyed the “incredible action scenes.”
[CLOSE NEW]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2011, Michael Cart, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, p. 17; February 1, 2014, Snow Wildsmith, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel, p. 50; October 1, 2015, Julia Smith, review of Library of Souls, p. 70; August 1, 2016, Julia Smith, review of Tales of the Peculiar, p. 77; September 1, 2018, Julia Smith, review of A Map of Days, p. 109; August, 2024, Rebecca Reitemeier, review of Sunderworld, Vol. 1: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry, p. 77.
BookPage, October, 2016, Becky Ohlsen, “Further Dispatches from a World That Celebrates the Strange,” author interview.
Children’s Bookwatch, January, 2012, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children; April, 2014, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel, p. 34; December, 2015, review of Library of Souls; November, 2016, review of Tales of the Peculiar.
Christian Science Monitor, June 17, 2011, Marjorie Kehe, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
Globe & Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), August 20, 2011, Claire Cameron, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, p. R20.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2014, review of Hollow City; March 31, 2014, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children; September 15, 2018, review of A Map of Days; July 15, 2022, review of Miss Peregrine’s Museum of Wonders: An Indispensable Guide to the Dangers and Delights of the Peculiar World for the Instruction of New Arrivals; August 1, 2024, review of Sunderworld, Vol. 1: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry.
Library Journal, May 15, 2011, Laurel Bliss, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, p. 77.
Los Angeles Times, January 9, 2014, Carolyn Kellogg, “Ransom Riggs and Tahereh Mafi’s Home for Bestselling Authors.”
New York Times, December 31, 2013, Maria Russo, “A Book That Started with Its Pictures,” p. C1.
Publishers Weekly, April 25, 2011, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, p. 139; July 25, 2016, review of Tales of the Peculiar, p. 77.
School Librarian, summer, 2017, Sue Roe, review of Tales of the Peculiar, p. 122.
School Library Journal, June, 2011, Misti Tidman, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, p. 132; February, 2014, Billy Parrott, review of Hollow City, p. 112; October, 2015, Billy Parrott, review of Library of Souls, p. 106; September, 2016, Billy Parrott, review of Tales of the Peculiar, p. 152; October, 2016, Billy Parrott, review of Hollow City: The Graphic Novel, p. 118.
Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 2011, Barbara Allen, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, p. 191; December, 2016, Alicia Abdul, review of Tales of the Peculiar, p. 78.
ONLINE
Alternative Magazine, (April 10, 2020), Marty Mulrooney, review of The Conference of the Birds.
Arts Sarasota website, http://artssarasota.com/ (December 16, 2011), Susan Rife, “Ransom Riggs Visits Alma Mater to Discuss Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.”
Direct Conversations, https://directconversations.com/ (September 2, 2016), Tim Lammers, “Interview: Ransom Riggs Thrilled to Enter ‘Peculiar’ World of Tim Burton.”
Entertainment Weekly, https://ew.com/ (September 30, 2016), Corey Nickols, “Tahereh Mafi and Ransom Riggs: Inside the Authors’ Magical Storytelling Factory.”
Fine Books Magazine, https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/ (February 4, 2014), Nate Pedersen, “Ransom Riggs: The Full Interview.”
Hindu, https://www.thehindu.com/ (November 9, 2018), Sindhuri Nandhakumar, “The Peculiar World of Ransom Riggs.”
Publishers Weekly, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (February 8, 2021), “Closeup On: Ransom Riggs’ The Desolations of Devil’s Acre.”
Ransom Riggs website, http://www.ransomriggs.com (February 16, 2025).
Storgy, https://storgykids.com/ (May 20, 2018), Ross Jeffery, review of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
USA Today, https://www.usatoday.com/ (April 25, 2018), Brian Truitt, “‘Miss Peregrine’ Book Series Kicks Off New Trilogy with ‘A Map of Days.’”*
Ransom Riggs
USA flag (b.1980)
Husband of Tahereh Mafi
Ransom Riggs is an American writer and filmmaker best known for the book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Riggs was born in Maryland on a 200 year old farm, and grew up in Florida where he attended the Pine View School for the Gifted.
Genres: Young Adult Fantasy, Children's Fiction
New and upcoming books
2025
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The Unfortunate Responsibilities of Leopold Berry
(Sunderworld, book 2)
Series
Miss Peregrine's Children
1. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011)
2. Hollow City (2014)
3. Library of Souls (2015)
Tales of the Peculiar (2016)
4. A Map of Days (2018)
5. The Conference of the Birds (2020)
6. The Desolations of Devil's Acre (2021)
7. Miss Peregrine's Museum of Wonders (2022)
Miss Peregrine: Graphic Novel
1. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel (2013)
2. Hollow City: The Graphic Novel (2016)
thumbthumb
Sunderworld
1. The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry (2024)
2. The Unfortunate Responsibilities of Leopold Berry (2025)
thumbthumb
Novels
Arcanum (2015)
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Non fiction hide
The Sherlock Holmes Handbook (2009)
Talking Pictures (2012)
Ransom Riggs
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ransom Riggs
Riggs in 2012
Riggs in 2012
Born February 3, 1979 (age 45)
Maryland, U.S.
Occupation Author
Alma mater Kenyon College (BA)
University of Southern California (MFA)
Genre Children's literature
Notable works Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Spouse Tahereh Mafi (m. 2013)
Children 1
Website
www.ransomriggs.com
Ransom Riggs (born February 3, 1979)[1] is an American writer and filmmaker best known for the book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
Early life and education
Riggs was born in Maryland in 1979 on a 200-year-old farm, and grew up in Florida, where he attended Pine View School for the Gifted.[2][3] He studied English literature at Kenyon College in Ohio,[4] where he was a good friend of John Green.[5] He later studied film at the University of Southern California.[6]
Career
His work on short films for the Internet and blogging for Mental Floss got him a job writing The Sherlock Holmes Handbook which was released as a tie-in to the 2009 Sherlock Holmes film.[6]
Riggs had collected curious vernacular photographs and approached his publisher, Quirk Books, about using some of them in a picture book. On the suggestion of an editor, Riggs used the photographs as a guide from which to put together a narrative.[6] The resulting book was Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which made The New York Times Best Seller list, and was adapted into the 2016 film of the same name.[7]
Another book inspired by old photographs, Talking Pictures, was published by HarperCollins in October 2012.[8]
The second novel in the Miss Peregrine series, Hollow City, was released in January 2014,[9] with the third installment, Library of Souls, following in September 2015.[10] A spin-off book of short stories, Tales of the Peculiar, was released in September 2016.[10] The fourth novel in the series, A Map of Days, was released in October 2018. The fifth novel in the series, The Conference of the Birds, was released in January 2020. The sixth, The Desolations of Devil's Acre, was released on February 23, 2021.[11]
Personal life
Riggs married author Tahereh Mafi in 2013. They lived in Santa Monica, California[12] and later moved to Irvine, California. Their first child, a daughter, Layla, was born on May 30, 2017.[13][14]
Works
Young adult novels
Miss Peregrine series
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011)[15]
Hollow City (2014)[16]
Library of Souls (2015)[17]
A Map of Days (2018)[18]
The Conference of the Birds (2020)[19]
The Desolations of Devil's Acre (2021)[20]
Companion Books
Tales of the Peculiar (2016), short stories collection[21]
Miss Peregrine's Museum of Wonders: An Indispensable Guide to the Dangers and Delights of the Peculiar World for the Instruction of New Arrivals (2022)[22]
Sunderworld series
Sunderworld, Vol. I: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry (2024)
Sunderworld, Vol. II: The Unfortunate Responsibilities of Leopold Berry (2025)
Stand-alone
Arcanum (2015)
Comics
Miss Peregrine series
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel (2011), with Cassandra Jean
Hollow City: The Graphic Novel (2016), with Cassandra Jean
Non-fiction
The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: The Methods and Mysteries of the World's Greatest Detective (2009), guide[23]
Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past (2012), photographies[24]
Adaptations
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), film directed by Tim Burton, based on young adult novel Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
HI, I’M RANSOM, and I like to tell stories. Sometimes I tell them with words, sometimes with pictures, often with both. I grew up on a farm on the Eastern shore of Maryland and also in a little house by the beach in Englewood, Florida. I started writing stories when I was young, on an old typewriter that jammed and longhand on legal pads. When I was a little older I got a camera for Christmas and became obsessed with photography, and when I was a little older still my friends and I came into possession of a half-broken video camera and began to make our own movies, starring ourselves, using our bedrooms and backyards for sets. I have loved writing stories and taking photographs and making movies ever since, and have endeavored to do all three, in some form or another. These days I make my home in Los Angeles with my wife, fellow novelist Tahereh Mafi.
Sunderworld, v.1: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry.
By Ransom Riggs.
Aug. 2024. 336p. Dutton, $21.99 (9780593530931). Gr. 9-12.
This first installment in the new YA urban fantasy series from worldwide best-seller Riggs (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series) delivers strange happenings, self-determination, and spontaneous combustion in a coming-of-age tale that begs the question, what if you were granted access to the magical world you'd always dreamed of--but only from the cheap seats? The only exceptional things about aggressively average 17-year-old Leopold Berry are his dissociative episodes: visions about Sunderworld, a magical realm parallel to ours and the setting of his favorite '90s TV show. Turns out, Sunder is real, and Leopold is a magic-wielding "spark," capable of traveling between realms and casting spells. He's just not a particularly good one. Following a haphazard initiation into Sunder, Leopold fails his magical aptitude test and is banned from Sunder forever. Banished, alone, and now a fugitive in both worlds, Leopold evades the LAPD and Sunder authorities while following clues left by his late mother, which lead him to new allies and to the realization that he might be more powerful than he knew-magical or not. Leopold's battle for selfhood balances hope, disillusionment, and perseverance in the face of a topsy-turvy reality and an emotionally unavailable father. Like the bittersweet Los Angeles it occupies, Leopold's offbeat Sunderworld is a little grimy and a little broken, but the magic is real and will stick with you.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Reitemeier, Rebecca. "Sunderworld, v.1: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 22, Aug. 2024, p. 77. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A808396883/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5faf0553. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.
Riggs, Ransom SUNDERWORLD, VOL. I Dutton (Teen None) $21.99 8, 27 ISBN: 9780593530931
Seventeen-year-old Leopold Berry discovers that the realm of Sunder from his favorite TV series, Max's Adventures in Sunderworld, is in fact a real place with very real stakes.
When Leopold starts having bizarre visions, such as of a raccoon with its tail on fire and a speeding red trolley in the middle of busy Los Angeles traffic, he suspects he's getting glimpses of the extraordinary place called Sunder, a fantasy world from his beloved show. He confesses his visions to his best friend, Emmet Worthington, and the pair wind up using a special token to take the trolley, Angels Flight, into Sunder. There, they discover that the complex world of sparks--people with magical abilities--includes connections to Leopold's mother, who died when he was 12. At the heart of it all, Leopold is trying to figure out why he's been pulled into this world and whether there's more to him than his deep fear of being "average and insignificant" and dealing with his father's frustrated rages. Riggs' writing is tight and well paced. Some incredible action scenes leap off the pages, and Sunder is a blur of dangerous situations, well-drawn characters, and magical devices. The ending will make readers wish they could immediately reach for the second volume. Leopold, like most of the cast, is cued white; Emmet is Black.
A fully imagined fantastical world with compelling characters and a nail-biting cliffhanger.(Fantasy. 13-17)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Riggs, Ransom: SUNDERWORLD, VOL. I." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A802865191/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5d115dce. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.