A Series of Unfortunate Events

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When I started reading A Series of Unfortunate Events,  I was pretty bored.  They moved slowly, but I finished them quickly.  There was a lot of death, and I really wasn't interested in indulging in that.  I wrote them off as a superficial kids' series that I could slog through when I had nothing better to read.

Lemony Snicket's series had come into a vogue a couple years after I aged out of the kids lit market.  I knew people liked it because they made it into a Jim Carrey movie.  I  saw the movie because I was into Jim Carrey and it's pseudo-goth vibe, but it didn't make much of an impression.

It wasn't until I started teaching fifth grade last year, that it really landed on my radar.  My students were all reading it and AGHAST that I had managed to stop mid-series.  "Ehh, they didn't have the sixth one at the library..."

Well, that was a weak excuse and they knew it.  "You  just need a copy of Book 6?  It's right here in my desk!  You can borrow it!"

So I started up again.  Slowly but surely.  And suddenly, the series started to turn around.  What began as a predictable, juvenile episodic (kids put in new wacky location, evil villain shows up in disguise, kids outsmart evil villain) gave way to something much more complex.  The world began to expand and connect, the author began to insert himself more, mysteries and intrigue began to emerge.  I was hooked.

But that's not why I'm sitting here raving about it.  I'm in love with these books because of the ideas the author began to introduce.  That's the ultimate question you have to ask yourself about kids lit:  what is it saying?   Lemony Snicket is saying a lot.

About halfway through the series, he starts toying with the conventional child-like concept of good and evil.  He starts to push his readers (who remember are usually about 9 - 13 year olds) to look past that villain/hero dichotomy that kids are so familiar with.  He starts to put his protagonists in situations where they have to strain to be "good" (or noble as he likes to say).  Sometimes they can't tell what's right or wrong.  Sometimes they fail.  Sometimes they choose to be harmful and destructive, and wonder if it's okay if it's a means to an end.  If they are "noble enough".  He starts to toy with the idea of "at what point does a person trying to do good, become bad?"

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Unlike Harry Potter which matured with it's readers, A Series of Unfortunate Events maintains the same tone throughout.  It is at the end, just as at the beginning, a series for children.  But it pushes it's readers to expand their thinking.  To add grey to the black and white of good and evil.   To see how we are all connected through complicated histories of choices and repercussions.  To see how there is often so much more to a story than you can see on the surface.

He also throws some hard truths at his readers.  About life having some questions that can't be answered (i.e. death) and how problems don't always wrap up nicely with pretty little bows.

On top of the philosophy of the books, they are incredibly clever.  He expands vocabulary like nobody's business, throws in sophisticated jokes and literary allusions,  forces you to make inferences, and wraps the whole story in a mystery you are dying to solve.

This seemingly innocuous series blew me out of the water. I know I want my future kiddos to be pushing their comprehension of morality and human nature far past good/evil; I'll be adding this series to my library.