Blog 3: Snicket and Miller

When it comes to a title like A Series of Unfortunate Events, you know right away that the book isn’t going to contain many happy events. However that doesn’t stop me from loving this series. The Baudelaires, Violet, Klaus and Sunny, are a couple of the most extraordinary orphan children. In the book The Austere Academy, there are many characters that I think a child could relate to in some way. We have Klaus, the middle child who’s a huge book nerd with a passion for getting as much knowledge as possible. We have Violet who is extremely smart and inventive and can basically use anything to fix any situation. Then we have Sunny, who is wise beyond her age of 1 or 2 years old, with a love of biting things! She would be the hardest to relate to since as far as babies go her character is very unrealistic. For example in one of the later books in the series, Sunny climbs an elevator shelf. Something I probably would not be able to do. In the book I picked specifically we also have the Quagmire’s, two also intelligent kids who are also orphans just like the Baudelaires. There’s Carmelita Spats, your typical spoiled brat who bullies kids because she thinks she’s better than everyone else. As far as adults go in the story, there are two types of adults, smart villains/spys, or really stupid, naive grown ups.

The two biggest themes in the book are sadness and the good vs evil quality of it. The author warns you in every book that the story isn’t going to be happy at all and that it will make you feel miserable and sad. My two favorite things about the series is the narration style and the type of genre or style that the author writes it as. I think the most unique thing about the series is the narration style, the author puts himself in as the narrator and from the narrator’s point of view is doing research about the Baudelaires. He often describes what the Baudelaires are feeling at this time. The series is also a dark but also comedic kind of series. I think the reason that the series can be dark and depressing but also be for kids is that a lot of it isn’t that realistic. I really don’t think I would use this series in a classroom setting because it’s not really something I feel like would be a good book to use. Maybe just for the vocabulary.

I really liked when Miller talked about how readers can also be jocks, artists etc. Which means that really anyone can be a reader, but not everyone has the skill to be good at art. I can definitely resonate with her binge reading section just because whenever I find I good book I can never put it down. When the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, I didn’t put the book down and finished it in five days. It’s really hard to stop once you get into a book because you just have to know what happens. Binge reading is exactly like binge watching a show, you can’t stop and you never know what to find next. In my classroom I would like students to have time to read every single day because sometimes you can’t get that atmosphere you need at home. I think that hardest thing to teach kids is how to stop fake reading because it’s something that they kind of need to take initiative with.