Rating: 
Summary: Adopted Again!
Review: My kids liked this one almost as much as Kingdoms and Elves of the Reaches by Robert Stanek, which I also recommend. The orphans are adopted by a wealthy couple but as you might expect from a series of unfortunate events, this "fortunate" event isn't what it seems. The wealthy couple are a bit mysterious and everything is a little too close to where the orphans troubles all began.
Rating: 
Summary: The Ersaz Elevator
Review: The Ersatz Elevator, by Lemony Snicket, is an intriguing novel about 3 young orphans, their guardians, and an evil man named Count Olaf. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are orphans due to a fire that destroyed their home and their parents. A lucky financial advisor and her husband adopted them the children think they are out of reach from their nasty uncle Olaf. The children encounter several unfortunate events in the novel. The end is not exactly "they lived happily ever after," on the contrary; it is very different than that.
The novel is set in an expensive penthouse in the present time. The message of this novel is that best friends will do anything to help each other. I liked Violet, Klaus, and Sunny because they are hardworking, and determined to get their friends back. I don't like Count Olaf because he is mean and nasty and wants to get the Baudelaire's fortune. What I like best about the book is when Violet, Klaus, and Sunny find a secret passageway at the bottom of an empty elevator shaft. What I least liked about the book was when their guardian pushes them down an empty elevator shaft. I like the ending because it leaves you in suspense.I like the author's style in some ways, and in some ways I don't. The author keeps the reader interested, but adds too much detail. The vocabulary is a little advanced. Since the vocabulary is a little difficult, I'd say kids 10-up could read and understand this book. I would recommend this book to all readers who like suspenseful novels....
ELF
Rating:
Summary: Best of the series so far
Review: This book is hilarious and full of creativity. The Baudelaire orphans have yet another set of guardians, the sympathetic Jeremy Squalor and the superficial Esme Squalor. Esme is obsessed with what's in and what's out of fashion and seems to spend her entire life attending to this matter. This obsession provides much of the humor of this book. Also funny is the Squalor's seemingly endless apartment. A new mystery presents itself to the orphans, the meaning of VFD, and much of the plot surrounds their efforts to unravel this enigma. This mystery continues into later books.
Rating:
Summary: IN!!!
Review: This was definatly one of the best Lemony Snicket books. The new orphan's guardians are the Squalors, who are obessed with waht is In and Out. I love they way they are decorating the lobby of their apartment on Dark Lane. Although this already happened in The Austere Acadamy, One of the characters in this book does reappear in the others. The next books wouldn't have been as interesting without her!
I also liked the part at the auction when the orphans are trying to bid for VFD, and the other things that happen at this part of the book.
Rating:
Summary: The best book ever!
Review: I think this is the best book out of the whole series! It is very exciting and has twists and turns and many dead ends. You think something is going to happen so you follow one path and then you have to turn around and go the other way! At the end it makes you want to keep reading but you have to get the next book to do so! Believe me! It's awesome!
Rating: 
Summary: Humbug
Review: I am moved to quote Yevgeny Yevtushenko: "Telling lies to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
...
The young know what you mean. The young are people.
Tell them the difficulties can't be counted,
and let them see not only what will be
but see with clarity these present times." -- excerpts from "Lies" in Yevtushenko: Selected Poems translated by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi, Penguin Books, 1962. In general, Lemony Snicket seems to agree violently with these sentiments. That's his whole shtick, isn't it? To present the unvarnished truth about the world? I applaud the attempt--it makes for lively, fun, and informative reading. Unfortunately, it goes badly wrong in The Ersatz Elevator, the sixth book of the series. In this book, I'm sad to say, lies abound. I refer, of course, to Violet's incredible plan to "weld" through the bars of a cage using iron pokers heated to white-hot temperatures in a kitchen oven. The errors in this particular invention (here the word invention means "a mental fabrication, especially a falsehood" rather than "a new device, method, or process developed from study and experimentation") are myriad: 1) Welding is a process of joining metals, not bifurcating them.
2) White-hot iron cannot melt through iron or steel, the metals most likely used to construct a cage.
3) Iron cannot be heated to white-hot temperatures in a kitchen oven.
4) White-hot iron cannot be safely carried in oven mitts.
5) Iron would not stay white-hot for much more than three minutes outside the oven, let alone the three hours it took to carry the pokers to their destination. Now, while persons can reasonably differ about whether it constitutes a lie to teach children about god or ghosts or santy claus, and while most children are intelligent enough to smoke out the true significance of magical powers in a cartoon or fairy tale, it is an entirely different thing to present patent impossibilities in a series of books that forcefully rejects the false cheer and optimism of typical children's literature, a series that purports to champion the power of self-reliance and the application of intelligence to the problems of life--a series ostensibly about children who research and engineer their own ways out of difficulties! Let Lemony Snicket take a dose of his own medicine, I say. Let him research his way out of such errors in the future. I prescribe a library of science books for the author, the editor, and any readers who have been confused by the ersatz science in The Ersatz Elevator.
Rating:
Summary: The Epic Adventure of the Baudilaire's
Review: This book is a masterpiece. As the Baudliere Orphans stare up at 667 Dark Avenue, they wonder if they'll ever find a kind and loving family. To make matters worse, there is a wacko doorman(or is he??) who does every thing that the Squalers say(at least, Esme Squaler.) Although things seem to be going well, Violet has a work bench, Kloas has his library, and Sunny has her hard objects, soon things will be turned upside down. They spot Count Olaf in discuse, but nobody belives them . Then, the orphans find the beloved triplets- Duncan and Isadora Quagmire who Count Olaf kidnaped in the last book. They find a way to rescue them, but Count Olaf and Esme hid them. When the orphans get back, they find a tunnel that leads back to their old house. In the end, Count Olaf and Esme Run off together and take the Quagmire Triplets with them. Alone and forgoton, the orphans set out together to find the meaning of VFD, find the Quagmire Triplets and find a family who loves them.
Rating:
Summary: Erie Encounters
Review: The book I am reviewing is The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket. I would definitely recommend this book. While reading this book you will encounter a darkened staircase, a red herring, some friends in a dire situation, and a liar with an evil scheme. This is what you, along with Sunny, Violet, and Klaus, the main characters experience. Please read the whole series. I definitely recommend it and give it five stars.
Rating:
Summary: The Phantom Tollbooth
Review: The Phantom Tollbooth is a great book. It is about a boy named Milo, Milo is very bored with his life. One day Milo came home to find a tollbooth in his room, when he goes through it he finds himself in a strange land. Milo makes lots of good friends and he goes on an adventure wiyh two of them, Tock and the Humbug, to save the princesses, Rhyme and Reason. I like this story, because it has lots of cool characters and it is in an abstract land.
Rating:
Summary: Better Than Best
Review: I recently read The Ersatz Elevator,#6,and thought that it was really good.I liked how the author used complicated words but then told what they meant. This story is about Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire and what happens when they go to Dark Avenue to live with some relatives that they didn't even know they had.Many terrible things happen to them.It's one of those books that you can't put down until you're done. I recommend it for anyone that enjoys miserable books about miserable people. I'd give this book an unlimited star rating!I hope you enjoy reading it.
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