It's tough when the things that stand between you and your desired sugar bowl are a host of deadly mushrooms and an uncomfortable diving suit. The unlucky Baudelaire orphans find themselves in deep (once again) in this eleventh book in Lemony Snicket's odd-and-full-of-woe-but-quite-funny Series of Unfortunate Events. In The Grim Grotto, the siblings find themselves headed down Stricken Stream on a broken toboggan when they are spotted by the submarine Queequeg, carrying Captain Widdershins, his somewhat volatile stepdaughter Fiona, and optimistic Phil from Lucky Smells Lumbermill. The adventures that follow as the crew tries to get to the aforementioned sugar bowl before Count Olaf are so horrible that the narrator inserts factual information about the water cycle so that readers will get bored and stop reading the book. It doesn't work. As per usual, readers will want to soak up every awf! ul detail and follow the Baudelaires all the way back to the place we first met them–Briny Beach.

What would you do if you found yourself trapped in a runaway caravan hurtling down a precipitous mountain slope? Fourteen-year-old Violet, the oldest orphan of the three Baudelaires, decides to try to slow the velocity of the caravan with a drag-chute invention involving a viscous combination of blackstrap molasses, maple syrup, maraschino liqueur, peanut butter, etc. If plummeting to their death weren't scary enough, Violet and her brother Klaus have been separated from Sunny, their baby sister who is in a car headed in the opposite direction up the mountain with the "facinorous" Count Olaf, his "villainous and stylish" girlfriend Esmé Squalor, and their creepy sidekicks.

Grade 4-7-Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Pirates of Penzance) has the perfect, mysterious voice for this reading of Lemony Snicket's book (HarperCollins, 2002). The plot, as in the other eight titles in the series, centers around the three orphaned Baudelaire children and their avoidance of Count Olaf, who is presumably trying to obtain their deceased parents' fortune. The children find their woeful refuge in a carnival, becoming more involved than any of them had planned. Madame Lulu's House of Freaks welcomes the children as a two-headed freak (Violet and Klaus) and Chabo, the Wolf Baby (Sunny). Will the orphans finally find out the secret meaning of the initials VFD? Will they discover something about their parents and the fire that made them orphans?

As you might expect, nothing but woe befalls the unlucky Baudelaire orphans in the eighth grim tale in Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events that began with The Bad Beginning. Ever since the orphans' photographs were plastered across the front page of The Daily Punctilio in an article falsely accusing them of murder, they have been on the run. Only when they disguise themselves as cheerful hospital volunteers (Volunteers Fighting Disease, to be exact), do they see a possible refuge. Of course, this backfires hideously.

The seventh book in Lemony Snicket's splendidly gloomy Series of Unfortunate Events shadows the three Baudelaire orphans as they plummet headlong into their next misadventure. Mr. Poe, their ineffective legal guardian, having exhausted all options for finding them a new home with relatives (including their 19th cousin), sadly entrusts his young charges' fate to a progressive guardian program formed with the premise "It takes a village to raise a child." Before they know it, the Baudelaires are being whisked off on a bus to a village (vile) named "V.F.D." Snicket fans who read The Austere Academy and The Ersatz Elevator will jump to see these three initials, as they provide a clue to the tragic disappearance of the Baudelaires' friends, the beloved, equally orphaned Quagmire triplets.

Fans of Lemony Snicket's wonderful Series of Unfortunate Events won't be surprised to find that in the sixth installment the three Baudelaire orphans' new home proves to be something of a mixed bag. As our ever sad but helpful narrator states, "Although 'a mixed bag' sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon at the movie theater, for instance, would be a mixed bag if your favorite movie were showing, but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all of the man-and woman-eating lions were running around loose.

As the three Baudelaire orphans warily approach their new home–Prufrock Preparatory School–they can't help but notice the enormous stone arch bearing the school's motto Memento Mori, or "Remember you will die." This is not a cheerful greeting, and certainly marks an inauspicious beginning to a very bleak story. Of course, this is what we have come to expect from Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, the deliciously morbid set of books that began with The Bad Beginning and only got worse.

"The Baudelaire orphans looked out the grimy window of the train and gazed at the gloomy blackness of the Finite Forest, wondering if their lives would ever get better," begins The Miserable Mill. If you have been introduced to the three Baudelaire orphans in any of Lemony Snicket's previous novels, you know that not only will their lives not get better, they will get much worse. In the fourth installment in the "Series of Unfortunate Events," the sorrowful siblings, having once again narrowly escaped the clutches of the evil Count Olaf, are escorted by the kindly but ineffectual Mr. Poe to their newest "home" at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill.

In The Bad Beginning, things, well, begin badly for the three Baudelaire orphans. And sadly, events only worsen in The Reptile Room. In the third in Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, there is still no hope on the horizon for these poor children. Their adventures are exciting and memorable, but, as the author points out, "exciting and memorable like being chased by a werewolf through a field of thorny bushes at midnight with nobody around to help you."

"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book." So cautions Snicket, the exceedingly well-mannered narrator of these two witty mock-gothic novels featuring the misadventures of 14-year-old Violet, 12-year-old Klaus and infant Sunny Baudelaire. From the first, things look unfortunate indeed for the trio: a fire destroys their home, killing their parents along with it; the executor of their parents' estate, the obtuse Mr. Poe (with a son, Edgar), ignores whatever the children have to say; and their new guardian, Count Olaf, is determined to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune. But by using their individual gifts (Violet's for inventing, Klaus's for reading and researching and baby Sunny's for biting) the three enterprising children thwart the Count's planAfor now.

Make no mistake. The Bad Beginning begins badly for the three Baudelaire children, and then gets worse. Their misfortunes begin one gray day on Briny Beach when Mr. Poe tells them that their parents perished in a fire that destroyed their whole house. "It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed," laments the personable (occasionally pedantic) narrator, who tells the story as if his readers are gathered around an armchair on pillows. But of course what follows is dreadful. The children thought it was bad when the well-meaning Poes bought them grotesque-colored clothing that itched. But when they are ushered to the dilapidated doorstep of the miserable, thin, unshaven, shiny-eyed, money-grubbing Count Olaf, they know that they–and their family fortune–are in real trouble.

Evidently not even Roald Dahl could resist the acronym craze of the early eighties. BFG? Bellowing ferret-faced golfer? Backstabbing fairy godmother? Oh, oh … Big Friendly Giant! This BFG doesn't seem all that F at first as he creeps down a London street, snatches little Sophie out of her bed, and bounds away with her to giant land. And he's not really all that B when compared with his evil, carnivorous brethren, who bully him for being such an oddball runt. After all, he eats only disgusting snozzcumbers, and while the other Gs are snacking on little boys and girls, he's blowing happy dreams in through their windows. What kind of way is that for a G to behave?

With his "secret plans and clever tricks," the Enormous Crocodile desires to lunch not with but on a nice, juicy child. His croc companion, the Notsobig One, is the first to try to talk him out of his scheme, claiming children are no good to eat. "'Tough and chewy!' cried the Enormous Crocodile. 'Nasty and bitter! What awful tommyrot you talk! They are juicy and yummy!'" One jungle critter after another–from Trunky the elephant to Muggle-Wump the monkey to the Roly-Poly Bird–tries to prevent the Enormous Crocodile from carrying out his dastardly deed, but on he waddles toward the village. Unfortunately for him, the animals have a few secret plans and clever tricks up their furry sleeves, too!

This is an absolutely amazing piece of work. In 1962, when I first read it as a snot-nosed college student, I thought the translator had done a terrific job translating from Russian into English. It wasn't until 30 years later that I learned Vladimir Nabokov had written it in English, his second language.

The original collection of chants and poems. "Jazz chants" introduce and reinforce the language structures and functions of everyday spoken English. The CD contains the chants recorded by the author and a choral speaking group.