The three Baudelaire orphans, Violet, Klaus and little Sunny, arrive at the Prufrock Preparatory School, only to be met by the unpleasant bully, Carmelita Spats. The children must to the Orphan's Shack where fungus grows from the ceiling and territorial crabs scuttle over the floor. Vice Principal Nero demands that the whole school attends his six-hour violin recitals every evening, or every child must give him a bag of candy. He employs Sunny as his secretary while the other Baudelaires are sent to awful classes, listening to dull stories or endlessly measuring household items. But there's a surprising island of happiness for the Baudelaires, they met Isadora and Duncan, the two remaining siblings of the Quagmire triplets who also have large fortune after their parents too died in a terrible fire. The happiness doesn't last long, however. Count Olaf returns in the guise of the new gym teacher, Coach Genghis. Under his evil eye, the orphans are forced to run through the night, as well as taking part in their day-time classes. Desperately thinking of a plan to escape from Count Olaf, the Quagmires offer to stand in for the Baudelaires on their night-time running laps, using a bag of flour in place of Sunny. But Count Olaf kidnaps the Quagmires instead, hoping to steal their fortune as well as the Baudelaires', and Violet, Klaus and Sunny are left with the cryptic final message from Duncan - the letters V. F. D. - and the horrible knowledge their new friends are in the unpleasant clutches of Count Olaf.
The Austere Academy continues Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, the deliciously morbid set of books that began with
The Bad Beginning and only got worse.
In The Austere Academy, Violet, Klaus and Sunny are at first optimistic--attending school is a welcome change for the book-loving trio, and the academy is allegedly safe from the dreaded Count Olaf, who is after their fortune. Hope dissipates quickly, however, when they meet Vice Principal Nero, a self-professed genius violinist who sneeringly imitates their every word. More dreadful still, he houses them in the tin Orphans Shack, crawling with toe-biting crabs and dripping with a mysterious tan fungus. A beam of light shines through the despair when the Baudelaires meet the Quagmires, two of three orphaned triplets who are no strangers to disaster and sympathize with their predicament. When Count Olaf appears on the scene disguised as Coach Genghis (covering his monobrow with a turban and his ankle tattoo with expensive running shoes), the Quagmires resolve to come to the aid of their new friends. Sadly, this proves to be a hideous mistake.
Snicket disarms us again with his playful juxtapositions--only he can compare bombs with strawberry shortcake (both are as dangerous to make as assumptions), muse on how babies adjust developmentally to the idea of curtains, or ponder why the Baudelaire orphans would not want to be stalks of celery despite their incessant bad luck as humans. We can't get enough of this splendid series of misadventures, and can only wager that swarms of young readers will be right next to us in line for the next installment. (Ages 9 and older) --Karin Snelson, Amazon.com.
