Not an unpleasant book but an informative one | The Truth Behind A Series of Unfortunate Events: Eyeballs,...

book: The Truth Behind A Series of Unfortunate Events: Eyeballs, Leeches, Hypnotism and Orphans --- Exploring ... | Lois H. Gresh

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	• The Truth Behind A Series of Unfortunate Events: Eyeballs, Leeches, Hypnotism and Orphans --- Exploring ... Lois H. Gresh St. Martin's Griffin, 2004 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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Courtesy of Teens Read Too

Ever heard of an automatic harmonica? Need to learn to pick a lock? Did you know there are 650 species of leeches? Fans of the Lemony Snicket series The Complete Wreck (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Books 1-13) will want to keep this unauthorized companion handy, and newcomers will find Gresh's "Ultimate Book Report about Lemony Snicket" (p. 192) a helpful resource when diving into the series for the first time.

Gresh's main goal appears to be to easily flow learning opportunities into The Truth without interrupting the reader's enjoyment. She accomplishes this by combining events from the series with academic enlightenment. For example, in Chapter Five, she references Book the Second, The Reptile Room (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 2), within a discussion of herpetology, frog facts, and a text-box entitled, "The Most Deadly Snakes in the World" (pp. 57-60). In another instance, Gresh references Count Olaf from the first book, The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 1). She includes Count Olaf's attempt to trick fourteen-year-old Violet into marrying him without the young girl's knowledge in Chapter Eight, among details of legal marrying ages in not only states throughout the U.S., but also other countries, as well as text-boxes entitled "Marital Law in Ancient Rome" and "Marital Law in Ancient Greece" (pp. 105-8).

Overall, although unauthorized, the facts, insights, and quizzes offered by Gresh make the world of Lemony Snicket seem a bit less "unfortunate."

Reviewed by: Mechele R. Dillard

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Not an unpleasant book but an informative one

The claim on the back of "The Truth Behind A Series of Unfortunate Events: Eyeballs, Leeches, Hypnotism, and Orphans--Exploring Lemony Snicket's World" is that this volume is the "ultimate unauthorized companion guide to the facts behind Lemony Snicket's wild world." Since this is the only one I have seen it is hard to say whether that is hyperbole or not. What Lois Gresh has done in this book is to look beneath the fiction into the realities of the Lemony Snicket universe. Violet Baudelaire likes to invent things, so Gresh explains how to build a telephone and a hot-air balloon mobile home and throws in some fascinating tidbits about who really invented the telephone and little-known facts about hot-air balloons. Young readers will also be able to read about real child inventors and their amazing inventions. The information provided is much more expansive than you would find in an annotated edition of something, but that is the general intent.

Gresh has authored books on "The Computers of Star Trek" and "The Science of Superheroes," so stopping and taking time to explain things we just take for granted in enjoying stories is apparently her forte. So there are chapters devoted to "What Happens to Real Orphans," "Strange Snakes, Lizards, and Toads," "Martial Law: Can an Old Geezer Marry a Young Girl?", "Picking Locks, Horseradish, and Peppermints," "Work, Slave Work! Child Labor Laws," "Crabs, Fungi, Staples, and Leeches," and "I Want to Be Someone Else." If you have read the Lemony Snicket books then you will know which chapters look at the "reality" behind which books (e.g., the last in the list explains how Count Olaf would disguise himself in the real world). Then there are chapters that are devoted to testing your knowledge about "Really Bad Grammar" and "Fancy-Pants Words." You can also test yourself to see if you are as smart as Violet and Klaus (or Sunny when she was one) on questions that are related to what happens in the series and other that are not.

For many readers what their enjoyment of this book will not come down to how it conveniently provides information about topics of interest regarding the world of Lemony Snicket, but how much the attempt to emulate the narrative style and look of the books bothers them. The book is the same dimension as the Lemony Snicket volumes, but without the rough edges of the paper. The illustrations are done in pencil in the style of Brett Helquist and as long as they are not showing any of the Baudelair orphans they are decent enough (I suppose from a legal standpoint none of the images are "really" of any of the characters in the books but that little point of irony does not help this volume). Most importantly (or not) Gresh tries to adopt the writing style of Lemony Snicket, but without the same sort of success (i.e., she tries too hard). This book works better when she is just providing information and leaving the comedy to the original stories because this is not an unpleasant book, it is an informative one. There are some attempts at analyzing symbols and motifs in the books, but, again, it is the informational aspect rather than the analysis that the legion of Lemony Snicket fans who stumbled across this volume will enjoy.

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The ultimate companion guide to A Series of Unfortunate Events--a must for fans of Lemony Snicket.A Series of Unfortunate Events is one of the most popular children's series in the world and will be a major motion picture starring Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep coming this 2004 holiday season. Now comes The Reader's Guide to Lemony Snicket, the ultimate companion guide to these fun and wildly successful novels. Digging beneath the surface, Lois Gresh uses science, history and little known facts to dig deep into the world of A Series of Unfortunate Events and provide young readers everywhere with how-to hints and tips, quizzes, cool anecdotes, fun facts and information on everything Lemony. Including:*Facts about handwriting analysis and forgery*Killer leeches, crabs, fungi and peppermint--all you need to know*The truth about hypnosis--and how to use it!*Real child inventors and their amazing inventions*How to build a telephone, a hot air balloon and an automatic harmonica*Are you as smart as Violet & Claus--the ultimate quiz*And much more!The ultimate renegade book report on A Series of Unfortunate Events, this reader's guide is a must for millions of young fans everywhere.

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