No. 83 - A Series of Unfortunate Events

Unfortunate could not be more fitting, in fact it could even be thought an understatement, considering what happens to the children in these books! Many of you will be familiar with Lemony Snicket's series through the recent adaptation of the stories for Netflix, and you may even have seen the 2004 film starring Jim Carey as creepy Count Olaf. I'll be honest though, the popularity of A Series of Unfortunate Events bemuses me rather.... 

As you will know from reading my previous posts I'm not really a fan of anything that's a bit dark. I like my books jovial and heartwarming, although I also like a bit of intrigue and mystery, but we'll save that for another day! I chose the start right at the beginning with the Lemony Snicket books and read the aptly named The Bad Beginning for this post. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't feel instantly enamoured with a book that warns me off on the first page! The Bad Beginning starts "If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book."*. Great, I thought! This book is not for me.... I read on..... "In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle."**. This was going to be a jolly read then! But against my better judgement I read on! And frankly, I shouldn't have done! The book was depressing from page one, until the very last, just as it said! 

I'll give you brief outline of the misfortunes that befall the Baudelaire children.....

SPOILER ALERT, if you plan to read the books or haven't watched the Netflix version yet!

• Firstly, the children's parent die in a housefire! They loose their home, their parents and all their possessions. Not the best start to the story I can tell you. 
• Then they get taken in by the executor of their parents' Will, a Mr Poe (who coincidently shares his name with the great gothic poet....!? I think not!) His wife makes them wear horrible itchy clothes, frankly adding insult to injury! 
• The Will states that they must be raised by a relative... enter the despicable Count Olaf.... Da Da Daaa! 
• The Count is EVIL!
• His cronies are EVIL too! And really rather odd.... There is a man with hooks for hands, and bald man with a very long nose, an androgynous giant, and two very pale ladies. Along with the strange Count Olaf, they wouldn't have looked out of place in a old travelling circus...
• The only upside to living with Olaf is the nice lady who lives next door, who is a judge and has a library! I was willing the children to tell her about their mistreatment, but of course they don't! If they did the story might have actually perked up!
• Olaf hatches a plan to get the children's fortune (they are very rich, see). This involves getting Violet, the eldest, to marry him so he is entitled to the fortune! 
• She must go ahead with it, or her baby sister Sunny will be dropped from a thirty foot tower to her death..... Cheery! 
• Violet manages to trick the Count, and the marriage is never declared legal! Mr Poe orders Olaf's arrest and it all ends happily ever after with the children going to live with the nice judge. Well thats good news, surely, I hear you cry... oh no... sorry, no can do..... 

At this point the book offered me a way out of this cycle of doom... "If you like, you may shut the book this instant and not read the unhappy ending that is to follow. You may spend the rest of your life believing that the Baudelaires triumphed over Count Olaf and lived the rest of their lives in the house and library of Justice Strauss..."***. Oh, was I tempted!!

But alas, I wouldn't be fulfilling my challenge if I didn't read to the end of book, so unfortunately I had to.... and the declaration on the first page was not a lie! There was no happy ending! Count Olaf escaped capture, to terrorise again! And the children had to go back to the Poe's house to go into the care of another relative, but who.....?

It's safe to say that I didn't enjoy The Bad Beginning, this book was not for me! But maybe i'm missing something, because these books, the film and the subsequent TV series seem to be very popular!

Thanks for reading, L x

(*Lemony Snicket, *p.1, **p. 1, ***p.156)

No.84 - Handa's Surprise

Number 84 is another picture book, hooray! I love a picture book! This time it's the much loved classic, Handa's Surprise, a tale about friendship and fruit! 

This vibrant and cheery book tells the story of Handa, and her journey to her friend's village to deliver a basket of fruit. Handa lovingly packs a selection of fruit in a basket as a surprise for her friend Akeyo. Whilst walking to Akeyo's village however, the fruit is pilfered by a variety of different animals, each keen on a certain piece of fruit! When Handa arrives at Akeyo's village she gets a surprise of her own.... and I can't possibly tell you what that is, or it wouldn't be a surprise anymore, and that's the whole point of the book! 

The book takes it's form from the journey Handa takes, from one village to the next, and each page shows little Handa walking purposefully towards the next page. With every page turn the journey has progressed a little further, until she finally reaches Akeyo's village. Along the way though, Handa's basket is visited by an assortment of wild characters, first a monkey, then an ostrich, a zebra, an elephant, a giraffe, an antelope, and finally a parrot. As each animal steals the fruit, in the background we see the previous animal making off with it's fruity treat from the previous page, creating a wonderful sense of continuity and reinforcing the journey structure of the book.  

Illustrations, of course, play a huge role in all modern picture books, (unless of course you're reading The Book with No Pictures by B.J Novak...). The images in Handa's Surprise present a vibrant and dynamic picture of it's African setting. They are rich with earthy golds and bright blues, allowing you to image the heat of the sun, and the bright sunshine. Handa wears a pink dress with a green pattern, which echoes the colours found in her fruit bowl, and again gives a real feeling of warmth. The pictures have little hidden signposts helping us to read the story, like the retreating animals I mentioned earlier, allowing the child and the reader to talk about the images and discuss the story. The joy of picture books is that there is often more to the image than what you can see straight away, and this leads us to a closer reading of the pictures and greater engagement for the child. 

The pictures can also tell a totally different story to that of the words, which is something we so often see in picture books written post Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, the parent of all modern picture books. Prior to Sendak's masterpiece, most picture books relied on the images supplementing the written text, rather than being read in their own right. These days we expect the images to be the main focus of the picture book, and for that we can thank Sendak!

The text and images clearly tell different stories in Handa's Surprise. The written text follows Handa's thought process, as she wonders which fruit Akeyo will like best, but the visual story shows the animals stealing the fruit. If the story was told without the pictures, the story, and in particular the surprise ending, would make no sense! The images and the text work together to create a double narrative, which allows for even more enjoyment of the story, as the listener/reader can see what Handa cannot, and is in on the surprise. 

Overall, I think Handa's Surprise certainly deserves the accolade of 'classic picture' book. The choice of setting is very successful, allowing small children to explore another culture, through it's people, it's produce and it's animals. There will no doubt be fruits in Handa's basket that some children will never have come across before! The stars of the show however, are most certainly the illustrations which are bold and zingy, using colour in a really effective way to make this book instantly attractive. And of course the double narrative depicted through text and images makes for an enjoyable and entertaining story. I think Handa's Surprise is a must-have for all children's bookshelves!

Thanks for reading, Lx

Next up, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.