Leo W recommends The Bad Beginning

Hey bloggers!

The book I’ll be reviewing today is The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket. This book is written in the third person. I chose this book because a friend in my English class recommended it to me so I decided to give it a shot. I came home the weekend that the project was assigned and opened the book to see if I liked it. I read the first few chapters and did not like it... I loved it! I was fascinated and astounded of this eye-catching thriller of a book! Something about the mysterious and exciting plots prevented me from putting the book down. I’m here writing on this blog to recommend this book so you too can be apart of the amazing experience I had while reading The Bad Beginning. I’d like to share that I'm not the best reader, I don’t usually read during my free time and it takes a lot for me to get attached to a book I like. But there was something contrastive about this book. I couldn't put it down. It was the pea to my pod, the milk to my cereal, the thorn to my rose, the… well, I think you get the idea. I was so amused by this book that it only took me a weekend to read it. I was reading the book without stopping to take a breath! I recommend you read this book if you enjoy scary, mysterious, and frightful events.

To tell you a little bit about the story, the setting in the beginning of the book takes place in an enormous mansion at the heart of a dirty and busy city. In the mansion lives the three Baudelaire children and their parents. Once in a while, there parents give them permission to take a trolley down to Briny Beach, where the three children spent most of their time. On this specific day it was gray and cloudy which meant the children had the whole beach to themselves. 

Violet Klaus

Violet, the main character and the oldest sibling, was skipping rocks with her right dominant hand as usual. She was fourteen years old and had dark brown hair. She loved inventing and was thinking of a device that could retrieve a rock after being skipped into the ocean. As an older sibling she thought it was her duty to keep her younger brother and sister away from trouble. This comes into play later on in the story.
Klaus, the middle child and only son, wore glasses which made him look intelligent. In fact he was very intelligent. The Baudelaire parents had an enormous library in their mansion, a room with thousands of book about anything. Being only twelve, Klaus, has not read all of them but a great amount. whenever he read something, it would stick with him and every day he would gain a ton of information. Klaus was small for his age and had dark brown hair just like his older sister Violet.

Sunny Baudelaire, the Baudelaire infant, is the youngest child. She has four sharp teeth which sometimes come in handy. In the story, she shows a love for cooking. She has brown hair just like the rest of her siblings and is about the height of a boot. Sunny is usually carried by Violet when they walk places.

Anyway, back to where I left off, the children were enjoying their day at Briny Beach. That is so until a man in a dark shadow is seen in the horizon. The mysterious figure walks up to the three hopeless children and greets them. It is Mr. Poe, a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire. He informs Violet, Klaus, and Sunny that there parents have died in a terrible fire which also burnt down their home. Who started the fire? What did the Baudelaire’s ever do to the criminal? Was the fire an accident? to find out this information, the rest lies in the story of the The Bad Beginning. Mr. Poe is the executor of the Baudelaire fortune. Mr. Poe takes the Baudelaire children, excuse me, orphans and bring them into his home. The stay in Mr. Poe’s house is only temporary because they are waiting to see if they have a relative close by. While at the house, they have a hard time settling in while Mr. Poe’s two sons bother the poor orphans. After days in the Poe home, they are taken to a relative they have never heard before. His name was Count Olaf. How come they have never heard this name before? Were their parents keeping something from them? Again, to find the answers you must read the book. Count  Olaf is  a terrible man. He is tall with pale white skin. He has Shiny eyes and a wheezy voice. He is the Baudelaire’s fourth cousin three times removed. Count Olaf is apart of many plays along with his mean theatre friends. He makes devious plots to try and steal the Baudelaire fortune left behind by their parents. He put Sunny in a bird cage suspended thirty feet over the ground. He is an alcoholic and makes the orphans do miserable and unfair chores. He also expected them to make a three course meal in one day. As you can tell, there is no, and I mean no good side to Count Olaf. The setting in this part of the book is Count Olaf’s house. They are stuck there for most of the book. Occasionally, the orphans go across the street to visit Justice Strauss, a judge in Town Court. Justice Strauss has a vast library just like the one there used to be in the Baudelaire mansion. Violet and Klaus start looking in her books with all sorts of laws to see if Count Olaf is doing anything illegal to the orphans. One day after doing their chores, the orphans hear a bunch of loud noises so they went downstairs to see what happened. It was Count Olaf’s theatre group. Every month there would be a new play and this months was called “The Marvelous Marriage.” This event is the plot of the book:

Count Olaf discovers that he can legally attain Violet's fortune by making her his wife. He disguises his plan by telling the children and Justice Strauss that they'll be performing in his new play, The Marvelous Marriage. Violet and Klaus read books in Justice Strauss' library and figure out Olaf's scheme. When they confront the Count. Olaf puts Sunny in a birdcage suspended high above the ground and threatens to drop her if Klaus and Violet don't cooperate with the plan. When Violet has signed the papers during the wedding scene in Olaf's play, the Count stops the performance to announce the marriage is legal. Violet then announces that she didn't sign the document in "her own hand," which is her right hand. Justice Strauss rules the argument valid and Mr. Poe assures the children he will find a new home for them. Suddenly the lights go out and the mean theatre group vanishes. Count Olaf claims to steal the fortune and to kill the kids.

Overall, I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. This is because there are a few things I don’t get such as: do the children go to school? Why would a high status person like a Count, Duke, or Bishop be such a rude person? The book also has a great moral which is knowing right from wrong. Lastly, I would recommend this book because the story is so interesting that you would never be able to put it down, and if their is a difficult word in the book it tells you what it means it that sentence.

The story is personally interesting to me because the characters remind me of myself and my siblings. For instance, my sister would like to invent stuff when she gets older and my other sister enjoys baking. I also like to read just like Klaus does.