Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning

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Summary: Alex Blanton
Review: The story THE BAD BEGINING takes place at an evil mans house, Count Olaf. You see there are some kids,Viliot,Klaus, and sunny Buedilar. There parents have died in a fire so they are forced to live with Count Olaf. Count Olaf relizes that they have a furtune and will do anything to try and still it. While they live there he makes them do hores like cook dinner for his dinner guest, because he runs a thaeter with scary people in masks. I give this book a lot of credit. It shows mystery,sadness, and escape. I will tell you if you get this book you will not be dissapointed.

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Summary: The Bad Beginning
Review: My review for The Bad Beginning is that it was a book for people who like a mystery and enjoy reading about people that have alot of troubles in their live. Thre kids, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, have many things go wrong throughout their lives. I the beginning of the book, the kids' parents are killed by a fire in their home. Their house is gonte. The parents left a big fortune for Violet when she comes of age. Count Olaf, a distant uncle, tries to steal the fortune. He is not able to. I would recommend this book to my brother, or someone who thinks it is cool that a kid has many problems in their life. I am not that kind of person, so this book is not one of my favorites.

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Summary: Good read for late pre-teens
Review: It is a decent children's book, maybe exceptional given our feel good society and how this book counter balances that, for maybe 4th through 7th graders. It gave, what is really an old stereo-type, that actors are a bunch of drunken no good scabs. Why we worship them the way we do, one wonders. Maybe this book is a good remedy. It has some good vocabulary, improving vocabulary is the only proven method of increasing one's IQ. The book gives men/boys the lesser of the admirable traits a character might have, and almost all the bad ones. Although it turns an androgynous (man/woman) creature into a villian, yahoo. One gets the feel, in the end, that men should be men and women should be women, and smell and dress different. So okay. The one thing I did not like is that it makes good and evil too clearly defined, thus unrealistic. Evil is typically people who think they are doing good but in fact are misguided evil people, which includes about 95% of the world's population. Count Olaf is just pure evil. But evil is rarely so distinguishable, and even Count Olaf would probably say, without qualms, that he was evil. I doubt Hitler or Rev. Al Sharpton would be willing enough to do that, in fact they would probably say they were good people. So, the book is a good worthy punch in the face. Realistic? No. Evil is more evil than count Olaf kids, it is often disguised as good people who even think they are good. Watch out.

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Summary: The Good Book
Review: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket is a realistic fiction story with weird characters that keep you reading until the end of the book. In the book there are three children who lose both their parents in a fire that burned their mansion. So they live with a mean relative named Count Olaf.Cout Olaftreas them badly and yet wants something from them. The book is written so young children can easily understand it.Had my father not sent me to bed I would have finished it in one sitting. The book brought alot of sad thoughts in my head and yet I found it quite interesting.

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Summary: Not such a bad beginning
Review: I have been hearing about The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket for about a year, and I had heard mostly good reviews about it. I got this book for Christmas, and I whipped through it in about three days. I found it to be quite amusing, mostly because of the author's continuing commentary on just how depressing the book was. The characters may not be the most well-developed or unique that have ever been created, but I found the story just plain funny. One thing I must say I did not like about it was how the author kept defining words in their context in the story. That was unneccessary, and it got very annoying when words that most kids know were defined over and over again. If you have heard that this is as good as Harry Potter, well, it's not. Not many books are as good as Harry Potter. But The Bad Beginning is a good book to fill the time, and I reccommend it to anyone who is looking for a good laugh.

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Summary: Don't take this book seriously!
Review: That's the point of the whole series - the unfortunate events are so unfortunate that they're preposterous. The kids are pretty one-dimensional but their actions (or rather reactions) are things that kids their age might think up if they were smarter than average. And I do love Lemony Snicket's explanations of the harder vocabulary words. They're perfectly in line with the way the whole book is written - as if the author had just turned his head away to hide his smile. I wish I could give 3 1/2 stars instead of 3 or 4 but I'm happier bumping it up to 4 rather than down to 3.

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Summary: Not for everyone, but who it's for it's GREAT
Review: If you like the normal, doofy happy cheerful children's books then do not read this or any of the others in the series. But, if you love dark humor and dry wit then this book and the ones that follow in this series are perfect for you. This book is a wonderful teaching tool for reality. I mean, stuff happens and sometimes you have to deal with it. It's not everyday that one can enjoy a life like that of the Littlest Elf (see book 7).

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Summary: The Not-So-Bad Beginning
Review: When I first took a look at this book, I thought I would never like it: it seemed grim and depressing. But then I read it all the way through! It was excellent.
Here is a bit of the plot: The Baudelaire children - Violet, age 14 (an inventor); Klaus, age 12 (a reader) and baby Sunny (a biter) - learn that their wealthy parents have died in a huge fire that destroyed their mansion. They are then sent to live with their creepy distant relative, Count Olaf, who runs a ghastly theater troupe. Olaf makes them chop wood for no apparent reason, and prepare pasta puttanesca for his fellow actors (who all become drunk). The Baudelaires sleep in a tiny, filthy room with one bed, and with a cardboard box for a wardrobe.
Olaf reaches the depths of his vileness when he concocts a plot to seize the children's fortune: he attempts to marry Violet, in quite a sneaky way. But Klaus (after reading up on nuptial law) alerts Violet, who gets out of the marriage in her own clever manner. Count Olaf escapes...but promises to be back (which he is, in the next book).
Yes, this plot sounds highly disturbing. Then again, I am not Lemony Snicket, and I can't adequately describe the book's writing. Snicket goes out of his way to define words like "garlic" and "anchovies", but in a very entertaining way. He also interprets Sunny's infantile outbursts ("Gack!" means "Look at that shadowy creature emerging from the fog!" or something along those lines), and makes references to his lost love, Beatrice, in random places in the book. The language is old-fashioned, one might say, but in a good way!
Best of all, though, is the resourcefulness of the three children: they are intelligent, well-read, and generally amazing. Count Olaf, too, is so delightfully evil that the reader feels no guilt about despising him.
However, I wouldn't recommend "The Bad Beginning" to anyone under ten or so - although, of course, each person is different. I an fourteen, but I only really liked this series when I was thirteen. (Then again, I think the Harry Potter books are terribly scary - although I love them - so there you are.) There are a few literary references (such as Mr. Poe's son Edgar) that younger kids might not understand, and of course, the plot is pretty scary. But I believe that anyone age eleven or above could enjoy "The Bad Beginning," even adults. (I've met adults who were in love with it.)
But of course, you should not trust me. I suggest you read it for yourself: I doubt that you will be disappointed.

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Summary: Grim and Fantastic
Review: A Bad Beginning, and all the books in the series, are wonderful. The mix of the grim and ridiculous make for some of the funniest books we've read in a long time. My daughter (aged 9) loves to tell her friends--and strangers-- all about the books, and has been responsible for at least 8 Lemony Snicket converts. My only complaint is that I have to wait for her to finish a book before I get to read it. She reads them on her own time as treat to herself (as opposed to a school assignment or the result of parental nagging) and can often be heard laughting outloud.

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Summary: The Bad Beginning
Review: The Bad Beginning was the first book in the Baudelaire series. The Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, who were skipping rocks at Briny Beach, receive terrible news that their parents died in a terrible fire. Ever since then, the Baudelaires lves have been filled with misery and woe, starting with when they have been sent away to live with their terrible, greedy, and evil uncle, Count Olaf. The children have to do chores every day and cook food for Count Olaf's rude theater troupe, but things only get worse when the Baudelaires realize that Count Olaf is only after the enormous fortune the Baudelaire parents left behind. Klaus, then middle Baudelaire, is the one who figures out that Count Olaf wants to marry Klaus's older sister Violet literally in a play called The Marvelous Marriage in order to gain control of the Baudelaires fortune, and things get even worse when sunnt is hung from the top of a tower in a cage until Violet agrees to marry Count Olaf. You'll have to buy and read the book for yourself to see how the Baudelaires escaped from their miserable situation.