Thursday, March 9, 2017

Review: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #1)
Cover Source: GoodReads.com
Title: The Bad Beginning
Author: Lemony Snicket
Series:  A Series of Unfortunate Events #1
Version Reviewed: Finished, Hardback
Website: www.lemonysnicket.com
I purchased this book myself.

GoodReads Synopsis:
Dear Reader,
I'm sorry to say that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant. It tells an unhappy tale about three very unlucky children. Even though they are charming and clever, the Baudelaire siblings lead lives filled with misery and woe. From the very first page of this book when the children are at the beach and receive terrible news, continuing on through the entire story, disaster lurks at their heels. One might say they are magnets for misfortune.
In this short book alone, the three youngsters encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune, and cold porridge for breakfast.
It is my sad duty to write down these unpleasant tales, but there is nothing stopping you from putting this book down at once and reading something happy, if you prefer that sort of thing.
With all due respect,
Lemony Snicket
Review:
Ever since I first saw the movie, A Series of Unfortunate Events, with Jim Carrey playing Count Olaf, I knew I had to read the books. Since then I have been slowly collecting used copies of the books and awaiting the day when I had them all and could open up the pages of the first book, The Bad Beginning.

With the introduction of the new A Series of Unfortunate Events show on Netflix, starring Neil Patrick Harris, my daughter has become obsessed with Count Olaf and the Baudelaire children. She has watched and rewatched both the movie and the show so many times that I have lost count and is constantly asking for more Count Olaf. And thus, the day I got to beam in pride at being a bookish mom finally came around. My three year old loves books and it made her day when I pulled out book one in the Unfortunate series. She saw the cover and immediately recognized Olaf, Sunny, Klaus, and Violet and couldn't wait until bedtime when we would dig in. At around a chapter a night, we finished the book pretty quickly and, considering the movie and show didn't change much, there was no question on whether or not we loved the book.

Being a mom that loves knowing big words and finding ways to work them into my everyday conversation, I absolutely LOVE that a book geared towards youngsters has such an abundance of large vocabulary and doesn't try to dumb it down for the younger readers. In fact, the book does it's best to TEACH the large words found inside it's pages and I am insanely impressed by that.

Overall, I can't get enough of this book and I hate that it took me this long to finally begin the series. The Bad Beginning wasn't such a bad beginning. :)

Rating: 4 Stars.

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