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Summary: The Great Beginning!
Review: Violet, Klaus and Sunny are 3 newly-orphaned children due to the tragic death of their parents. Their parents had been wonderful, supportive and kind, but now the siblings are under the care of Count Olaf, the villanous man who is after the baudelaires' massive fortune, only to be used when Violet is of age. The children begin to miss their parents, and in their unique ways make plans of escape. Will it all work well, and will they escape the man set on robbing them? Lemony Snicket introduces us to a series of unfortunate events, a great read for all ages. If you enjoy reading or not, these are really good!
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Summary: Was disturbed and dismayed by this book.
Review: I bought this book at my children's school book fair after reading some of the reviews here. I believed from the text on the book jacket that there must be something delightful and darkly humorous about these books. Unfortunatly all I found was a thin plot line, some rather intellgent but somewhat clueless children, and conniving relative with muderous intents. Also he and his friends have some veiled "desires" towards the oldest teenage daughter.I see no true value to this book, other than an excellent writing style and an excellent vocabulary. I for one will not let my children rea
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Summary: Assembly line crap
Review: I can't understand the popularity of these books. The villain is one-dimensional. The children, despite their various "talents" are frustratingly unresourceful. (They're in trouble, they have a sympathetic *judge* who lives next door, yet they never ask her for advice? Perhaps they had their reasons, but they're not articulated, and so they seem rather useless and hard to cheer on.) There's a self-conscious and self-congratulatory cleverness to the writing. It seems "Snicket" just does not respect his audience. Skip this assembly line crap and read quality children's books that deal with the dire fates of orphans so much more satisfyingly. • Noel Streitfield's SHOES series. This writer has a very clear respect for her readers and doesn't indulge in cheap melodrama.
• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken. Very similar themes, but SO MUCH BETTER!
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Summary: I tried to like it but...
Review: I started reading this book fully expecting to like it. The back cover was wonderfully grim with it's Poe-ish tone and it's Edward Gorey-like illustrations. However, I found the book to be simply grim with little or no tongue-in-cheek humor. The general tone of the book is so depressing that it just wasn't worth it to me to keep reading. I would not particularly recommend this book, although others obviously favor it.
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Summary: Horrible Story
Review: I teach and work with children, and I fail to see any productive purpose in scaring children with the idea of both their parents dying in a fire and then having those children ending up with a distant relative who emotionally and physically abuses them, with strong hints of adults wanting to inflict sexual abuse on the children, and the kids being threatened with murder to top it off.
The sickness of the content by far overpowers the author's evident talent at writing. The book left me with a stomachache for all the children that will have to endure being introduced to this book and being drawn in by the author's craft, and in response have to live with new inner turmoil.
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Summary: The Bad Begining
Review: The book I'm going to tell you about is, called A Series of Unfortunate Events, the author of this series is Lemony Snicket. This is a fiction story and is a series of about 10 books. This story is about three little kids who have to go through a lot because of their misfortune. I'm only going to tell you about the first book. The first book is called The Bad Beginning and this book is about how the children loose their parents in a terrible fire, and that's where the misfortune began. Little by little their lives began to change into one big mess. Because of the tragic death of their parents they have to move in with a mysterious uncle who likes to mistreat them and threatens to have the youngest one killed if the oldest one disagrees to marry him. But do not be alarmed because the oldest one, Vilot (who loves to invent things) thinks of a brilliant plan that saves the youngest one (Sunny, who loves to nibble on things) and the middle child, Klaus (who loves to read) from the Evil clutches of their so called (uncle Olaf).
I love this book and if you were to read it I guarantee you'll love it too. I think the book message is even though you are having hard times, there's always a bright side and it might not seem like there is but you can always do the best to find it.
If I were to give my opinion on this book I would say that this is the best book to read if you're into mystery books, and if you are then this is the book for you. I absolutely love this book, it's my all time favorite, so I'm definitely going to give this book 10/10, and a 5 star review. I recommend this book to anyone who's willing to read it. It's the best!!
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Summary: Chuck it Out the Window
Review: I must say after having made myself stomach the first 3 I just had to chuck the 4th right out the window in mid-read. While I must admit that the first book had it's own original plot and was entertaining enough, the rest of the books seemed to have the exact same plot with a few certain character name changes. All that seemed to happen was: the children went to a new relative (whether they got on with the relative or not seemed irrelavent), Count Olaf followed them and disguised himself and had yet another "ingenious" plot to take the children's inheritence, he was folied, for some reason or another the children had to leave their newest gaurdian and find another. Perhaps Snicket came up with new plots to follow the rest of the books however, I just couldn't take anymore. As for Snicket's continual interruptance of the story to "warn the reader" of the unfortunate events coming up, while it was cute and even creative at first it got old and rather annoying very quickly to the point where I felt like tearing out those specific pages. I can not see how people equate these books with the likes of Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, His Dark Materials, The Chronicles of Narnia, etc, which are obviously on a much higher level.
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Summary: The Bad Beginning to an awesome series
Review: The aweful, terrible, horrendous, and just plain bad beginning of this series could not get any better! The tale is a mockery of all those sickeningly sweet childrens tales. Everything in the story goes wrong, everyhting that can go wrong does. With the confert of the children always sticking together. The three children's parent's die, and they have to go through "bad guys" who watch over then and who want to seal their fortune. This is a wtory for older children who are tired of happy happy happy stories. Children who take things copletely seriously and are very worried about the cildren wouldn't liek this book, but might when they are older. I would recomend this book for anyone over 8. And that's all folks!
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Summary: The Mysterious and Wondrous Book
Review: Lemony Snicket is a fantastic author. In his book, The Bad Beginning, he introduces a handful of suspicious, creepy, curious, intelligent, and ultimately, heart-warming characters. Both Violet and Klaus, the two older Baudelaire orphans are good role-models for little Sunny, their baby sister. Despite their parents dying, the children are still doing well - that is of course until they meet Count Olaf, an evil relative who is not only rude and conniving, but he is also trying to steal the Baudelaire fortune (the money that the orphans will inherit from their deceased parents). People should read whatever they want, but this is an extraordinary book, and I highly recommend it. Books like this are mysterious and wondrous. At the end of each chapter it will keep you wondering what happened next! For instance, at the end of chapter eight, when Klaus and Violet are looking for Sunny, Count Olaf appears in the doorway to their room and smirks menacingly. Then the chapter ends, leaving the reader wondering what will happen next. Everybody can like this book, especially if they like mystery and suspense and little kids getting tortured (but I hope no one likes little kids getting tortured!) Stuff like that is why I like this book. This book is good for all ages, but I would highly recommend it for ages 11 and up.
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Summary: What an introduction to this sad series!
Review: Three Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, are playing on the beach when their life, as they do not know as of yet, takes a turn for the worst. The family banker, Mr. Poe, informs them that their parents have been killed in a fire, along with all their family belongings. Ushered immeadiately to the home of a distant relative, and their soon-to-be enemy, Count Olaf, they continue living. And the fact that their parents are dead is just the least of their problems. They learn that Olaf is trying without hesitation to get at their enormous fortune which was left behind by their late mother and father. So, as the children continue to be the victims of a terrible man's plots, they can do nothing but think up ways to get out of their situation. They seem to be a good team, for Sunny, the baby, loves to bite, Klaus, the middle child, loves to read, and Violet, the eldest child, loves to invent. Then one day Olaf apologizes for his behavior to the children, and asks them to participate in his play, The Marvelous Marriage. In this play, Olaf secretly plans to marry Violet to get hold of the fortune. How the play and the rest of the book turns out is yours to find out, and I hope you do read this book. It is quite good, despite it being part of a "depressing" series.
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