The Bad Beginning

The Bad Beginning
Author Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler)
Illustrator Brett Helquist
Cover artist Brett Helquist
Country United States
Language English
Series A Series of Unfortunate Events
Genre Gothic fiction
Absurdist fiction
Steampunk
Mystery
Publisher Scholastic Inc.
Publication date
 September 30, 1999
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 162
ISBN 0-06-440766-7
OCLC 41070636
Fic 21
LC Class PZ7.S6795 Bad 1999
Followed by The Reptile Room

The Bad Beginning is the first novel of the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. The novel tells the story of three children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, who become orphans following a fire and are sent to live with Count Olaf, who attempts to steal their inheritance.

The book was published on September 30, 1999, by Scholastic Inc. and illustrated by Brett Helquist. An audiobook was released in 2003, several special editions of the book have been made and the book has been translated into many different languages. The novel has received positive reviews.

Plot

The book begins with introducing the 3 Baudelaire siblings, Violet, a 14 year-old, Klaus, a 12 year old and Sunny, who is still a toddler and speaks single words that are supposed to act as variables for words that only her siblings understand. Violet is an inventor and Klaus is a bookworm. One day when they are at the beach, their parent's friend, Mr.Poe, informs them that their house has burned down, and that their parents perished as well as the mansion. They are then escorted to his house while he takes care of their parent's fortune and looks for relatives that they could live with.

Mr.Poe finds one, and so the children are sent to live with Count Olaf, a third or fourth cousin of their parents. Despite his house having plenty of other rooms, he attempts to ruin their life as much as possible and send them to a dirty room with only one bed, and nothing to entertain children. Each night, they take turns using the bed: One person on the floor, the other on the bed and Violet, using her clever mind, makes Sunny a bed with the curtains. Each day, Olaf leaves a note behind in their room demanding them to do chores that children are not supposed to do.

One day, he apparently wants them to cook dinner for him and his group of actors in a play, even though he knew that they didn't know how to cook. They then decide to go to Justice Strauss, a polite elderly woman who is Olaf's neighbor. Strauss has a huge library in her house, and the Baudelaire children thankfully get recipes for making puttenesca sauce and spagetti. When Count Olaf returns, he ruins their life even more by asking why there wasn't any cooked beef, even though he didn't tell them to, and he is enraged when they tell him that they made puttenesca sauce. When Sunny starts crying, he is about to injure her when the guests arrive, and Klaus, Violet and Sunny are to serve them. When they leave, Klaus loses his temper and acuses Olaf of purposely trying to ruin their lives. Olaf strikes him across the face, and the children go to sleep.

The next day, after chopping wood with axes as Olaf demanded them to, they go to the bank where Mr.Poe was taking care of their family's fortune, and attempt to get help from him to stop Count Olaf. Mr. Poe sadly says that Olaf is now technically their father, and says that he couldn't really do anything about it. One day later, the children are confronted by Olaf, who reveals that they will be part of his next play, The Marvelous Marriage, and that in the final part of the play, the main character marries someone, and that the main character was Olaf and the bride was Violet. Despite Olaf treating them with better attitude that day, the children are suspicious, and once again go to the library of Justice Strauss. After doing so, Klaus finds out that Olaf was attempting to literally marry Violet so that he could take the children's fortune and be rich. Klaus guesses that Olaf will, in the play, give the paper to Violet to sign, and if she writes 'I do', as referring to she does accept the marriage, (which she will since it is part of the play), then the marriage will not be part of the play, but literal, since that was by law.

The next morning, he tells Violet what he found out, and the 2 try to wake up Sunny, only to find out that she was taken and put into a birdcage dangling from a tall tower. Count Olaf blackmails them, saying that if she didn't marry him so that he could steal their fortune of money, he would let the birdcage fall to the ground, and that Sunny would fall to her death. That night, Violet creats a grappling hook out of dirty clothes that the got from Mr.Poe's house, and metallic parts from Count Olaf's house. She then attempts to make the grappling hook latch on to part of the tower so she could rescue Sunny, but she fails and is captured by one of Count Olaf's henchmen, who, instead of having hands, had two hooks.

The two are sent to the play, and Justice Strauss, Mr.Poe and his wife are part of the play as well. When Violet is signing the document with 'I do', Count Olaf reveals to the audience that he is now her actual husband. The audience is utterly surprised, and Mr.Poe and Justice Strauss disagree openly with Count Olaf. Violet then reveals that she wasn't his husband, since she signed the document with her left hand, not her right hand, and that in the law books for marrying, it only counts if the person signed it with their strong hand. The siblings reveal to everyone that Count Olaf had hanged Sunny in a birdcage on a tower. The police go after him and they reunite with Sunny. When Justice Strauss is about to adopt them, Mr.Poe disagrees, saying that their parents would want them to be with a family member. After tearfully leaving her, the Baudelaire children and Mr.Poe search for the children's next guardian.

Critical reception

In 2012, School Library Journal named it the 48th best children's novel.[1] Publishers Weekly praised Snicket's prose, observing, "The author uses formal, Latinate language and intrusive commentary to hilarious effect, even for readers unfamiliar with the literary conventions he parodies."[2] The review went on to laud Helquist for his "exquisitely detailed" and "elegantly designed" artwork.[2] The trade publication Library Journal praised both Snicket's narrative and prose: "While the misfortunes hover on the edge of being ridiculous, Snicket's energetic blend of humor, dramatic irony, and literary flair makes it all perfectly believable."[3] Kirkus Reviews noted the uncomfortably macabre tone of the novel, warning that because "the Baudelaire children are truly sympathetic characters", the novel is "not for the squeamish".[4] Catherine Pelosi of Kids' Book Review responded positively to The Bad Beginning, describing it as "exciting, humorous and appropriately dark".[5]

Special editions

The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition

The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition (ISBN 0-06-051828-6) was published by HarperCollins on September 23, 2003. In addition to a box, new cover, and additional illustrations, this edition contains a fourteenth chapter filled with author's notes, many of which foreshadow later events in the series or provide excessive detailed information about the events in The Bad Beginning itself.

The Bad Beginning; or, Orphans!

The Bad Beginning: or, Orphans! is a paperback edition of The Bad Beginning designed to mimic a Victorian penny dreadful.[6][7] It was released on May 8, 2007.[7] The book features a new full-color cover, seven new illustrations, and the first part of a serial supplement entitled The Cornucopian Cavalcade, which in this edition includes the first of 13-part comic entitled The Spoily Brats along with a page of Victorian-era false advertisements, both produced by Michael Kupperman; an advice column written by Lemony Snicket along with a page listing every entry in A Series of Unfortunate Events (some of which are fictional); the first part of a story entitled Q: A Psychic pstory of the psupernatural by Stephen Leacock;[8][9] and a guide by Morley Adams on paper folding.

Other special editions

Two more editions of The Bad Beginning were published by Egmont Publishing on October 1, 2003—The Bad Beginning: Special Edition (ISBN 1-4052-0725-6) and The Bad Beginning: Limited Edition (ISBN 1-4052-0726-4). They come in a larger format and contain three plates of color artwork that are redrawn from the original edition of the book and two plates of new color artwork. The Limited Edition is bound in leather and contained within a box, similar to the Rare Edition, and each copy was signed by Daniel Handler. There is also a new "Short-Lived Edition", released for general sale on June 14, 2012.

Audiobook

Two audiobook versions of this novel were released. The first version was released in September 2003. It was read by Tim Curry and featured Daniel Handler, under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket, who read a portion entitled "A Conversation Between the Author and Leonard S. Marcus." It won an "Earphones Award" on AudioFile, which described the audiobook as "fabulously funny" and complimented the conversation involving Handler.[10]

The second version was released in October 2004, after the release of the film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. This multi-voice cast audio book was narrated by Tim Curry and featured Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, and Jude Law. This version also included sound effects and a soundtrack. This edition of The Bad Beginning was an Audie Awards finalist for Children's Titles for Ages 8+ in 2005,[11] and a Grammy Award Nominee for Best Spoken Word Album for Children in 2005.[12] AudioFile gave the audiobook a positive review, although stated that "the cast of seven at first sound self-consciously formal until one realizes that the acting is supposed to be as mannered as the clever writing".[13]

Translations

Most foreign editions have borne titles which are direct translations of the phrase "the bad beginning", including:

However, the Indonesian version, Mula Malapetaka, translates to "The First Catastrophe" (ISBN 979-22-0301-X); the French Tout commence mal…, "All Begins Badly", translated by Rose-Marie Vassallo (Éditions Nathan, 2002: ISBN 2-09-282353-1); and the Quebec French Nés sous une mauvaise étoile, "Born Under a Bad Star", apparently also translated by Rose-Marie Vassallo (Éditions Heritage, 2007: ISBN 2-7625-2942-5), the Korean version 눈동자의 집 translates to "The House of the Eye" (ISBN 89-546-0834-5), and the Japanese version 最悪のはじまり translates to "The Worst Beginning" (Soshisha, 2001: ISBN 4-7942-1070-1).

See also

Quotations related to The Bad Beginning' at Wikiquote

References

  1. ↑ Bird, Elizabeth (May 28, 2012). "Top 100 Children's Novels #48: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket". School Library Journal. Retrieved July 27, 2012.
  2. 1 2 "Review from Publishers Weekly". Amazon.com. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  3. ↑ "Review from Library Journal". Amazon.com. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  4. ↑ "Review from Kirkus Reviews". Kirkus Reviews. July 15, 1999. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  5. ↑ Pelosi, Catherine (August 9, 2011). "Review: A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning". Kids' Book Review. Retrieved July 18, 2015.
  6. ↑ The Star (Toronto) http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160689837900&call_pa. Retrieved May 25, 2010. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  7. 1 2 A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning, By Lemony Snicket , Illustrated by Brett Helquist: Harper-Collins Children's Books
  8. ↑ Mitchell-Marell, Gabrielle. "Now for the Unfortunate Paperbacks...". Publishers Weekly. Archived from the original on November 11, 2007.
  9. ↑ A Series of Unfortunate Events ::: NOW IN PAPERBACK!
  10. ↑ "A Series of Unfortunate Events #1". AudioFile. August 2001. Retrieved July 18, 2015.
  11. ↑ "Audies Gala 2005 Winners and Nominees". www.audiopub.org. Retrieved 2010-04-28.
  12. ↑ "Complete list of Grammy Award nominations". usatoday.com. February 8, 2006. Retrieved 2010-04-28.
  13. ↑ "A Series of Unfortunate Events #1". AudioFile. December 2004. Retrieved July 18, 2015.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, May 05, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.