THE BAD BEGINNING

Snickett, Lemony. The Bad Beginning. New York, NY. Harper Collins Publishers. 1999.

Annotation: The Baudelaire orphans are sent to live with the evil Count Olaf who will stop at nothing to get at the Baudelaire family fortune. The quick and clever children will need to stick together to protect their money and their lives.

Nomination: I realize that we are past the nomination/rejection process but I would like to make a case for you to read The Bad Beginning. It is the first book in Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and focuses on the relocation of the Baudelaire chidren after the death of their parents.  Snicket makes this book a lot of fun with his use of language and sly humor.  The author has an ongoing dialogue with the reader while narrating the story as an interested and frightened outsider.  This is a wonderfully fun book, despite Snicket's insistence that it is not fun, that tells the awful story of a shattered family that is held together by the will of children.