The Bad Beginning by Lemony SnicketThe Bad Beginning starts the tale of the Baudelaire orphans and their sad and unfortunate lives beginning with the death of their parents. The narrator, Lemony Snicket, warns the reader of a sad story with no happy ending and that is exactly what you get. The sad tale of Violet, Klaus and Sunny and their first encounter with Count Olaf.
Finally, after years of hearing about these books, I have read the first in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Having seen the movie awhile back I did feel like I had read this before. There were many similar parts but the differences were very evident. I am aware that that the movie had elements from several books.
For the most part, I enjoyed it. I like the way the story is narrated except for the constant defining of terms used in the book. I realize the book is for a much younger audience than me, but it still bugged me. Why not let kids go and look up the words on their own if need be? Kids are smart and should learn to figure out meaning of words by their context and/or use a dictionary when they can't. I am a teacher, though, and believe in having high expectations of kids. They don't need to have words defined for them in the narrative.
Still, I look forward to reading the second book in the series.
3/5
AtoZ Challenge
3/5
AtoZ Challenge
I loved this series. I thought it was very cleverly written. :D I didn't get bugged about the word definitions because of the satirical tone. But with The Tale of Despereaux, the same thing was quite annoying, as it felt more forced there.
ReplyDeleteI remember having to look words up when I was a kid. That taught me valuable skills.
ReplyDeleteClaire- I guess I missed the tone of it then. I just felt like it was condescending to the readers. Anyway, I still enjoyed it. It was a quick and entertaining read.
ReplyDeleteJenny- Me, too. I actually loved looking up words I didn't know. :)
No... When 'Lemony' defines terms, you DO realise that that's not ACTUALLY the correct definition? Well, it IS, but in a joking context.
ReplyDelete