a series of unfortunate events

Snicket, L. (1999). The bad beginning. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
ISBN: 978-0064407663

Lemony Snicket. Don't you want to read books written by a person called Lemony Snicket? Even if it is a pseudonym?

The Bad Beginning (and the subsequent 12 books in this series) chronicles the misadventures of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, three siblings whose parents have died in a mysterious, tragic fire. With no responsible adults to care for them, the Baudelaires are left to their own devices to survive--and prevail over the evil Count Olaf, a most delicious villain who is intent on claiming the Baudelaire fortune.

In The Bad Beginning, the first book of the series, the Baudelaires find themselves all of a sudden thrust into a world where adults fall into one of two groups: kind, sweet, well-meaning adults (like Mr. Poe and Justice Strauss) who are completely ignorant to the truth of any situation, or evil adults like Count Olaf and his bizarre gang of accomplices. Klaus, Violet, and Sunny quickly learn that they will have to fend for themselves. This they do, by each capitalizing on their special talents. Violet, a brilliant inventor, creates contraptions to help her siblings out of sticky situations, always pausing to tie her hair up with a ribbon first, which maximizes her creative thinking. Klaus, a bookworm, uses his knowledge of everything from trains to grammar to snakes to pasta sauce to stay one step ahead of count Olaf. And Sunny? Well, Sunny bites. She’s just a baby, after all. But her sharp teeth come in handy over and over again.

Each book involves near-misses, dangerous scrapes, inept adults, crazy inventions, bravery, and adventure. As the series progresses, the Baudelaires begin collecting clues about a mysterious group called the VFD that is connected to their parents somehow, and the second half of the series deals with this mystery in addition to the continued battles with Count Olaf.

The books follow a fairly predictable plot structure—near-misses, dangerous scrapes, inept adults, crazy inventions, bravery, and constant exhortations to stop reading (a delightful bit of reverse psychology that works). Snicket's lyrical, verbose writing is as much a character as any of the people in the series; puns and impressive vocabulary words are peppered throughout. Each book ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, and readers will want to read through the whole series to see what becomes of the Baudelaires. The ending isn't happy. But you are warned at the beginning that it won't be. A fabulous read aloud selection; great also for a third or fourth grader looking to get hooked on a series.