The children’s books are ostensibly the handiwork of Snicket, though somehow, his author photos inevitably fail to show his face. At readings and personal appearances, Snicket is “represented”-ahem-by Daniel Handler, 30, a native San Franciscan who under his own name has authored two comic novels for adults, “The Basic Eight” (1999), about a group of teenage murderers, and “Watch Your Mouth” (2000), which concerns incest.
But his writings as Snicket have far outsold his more mature works-and have attracted a vast, cult-like readership. The first page-turner, “The Bad Beginning,” was released in 1999. It tells the story of the Baudelaire children-Violet, 14, Klaus, 12, and Sunny, the baby-who become orphans early in the book: on page 8, to be exact. The next four books in the series followed quickly, each one reaching the top 25 on the New York Times list of children’s best sellers. Movie rights were purchased by Nickelodeon Films and the books will soon appear in German, Italian, Hebrew and six other languages. “The Ersatz Elevator,” the sixth in the series-Snicket plans to write 13 all together-will hit bookstores in March. In total, 400,000 copies of all the books are in print.
Why the popularity? “At a certain age, say 10, dark humor is incredibly funny to kids,” says Eleanor LeFave, co-owner of Mabel’s Fables, a Toronto children’s bookstore.
Says Handler himself: “It’s not the usual saccharine happy ending that kids tired of. The books address issues of danger and abandonment, things kids ponder late at night before they go to bed.”
Indeed, the author lets readers know on page one that this is hardly going to be “James and the Giant Peach”: In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. Throughout the series, the Baudelaire children experience one set-back after another. Early on, they’re put in the care of distant relative Count Olaf-a ne’er-do-well actor (either “a third cousin four times removed, or a fourth cousin three times removed”) who cares only about getting his hands on the Baudelaire fortune. In every volume, the villainous Count Olaf pursues his money-grubbing schemes with a troupe of henchpersons not often seen in children’s lit: a hook-handed man, two women with white faces, a sinister bald man and “an enormous creature who looks like neither a man nor a woman.”
Yet, the siblings always prevail, supporting each other throughout every dismal predicament-no matter how odd. In “The Miserable Mill,” they’re put to work in a sinister lumbermill where they get only chewing gum for lunch. In “The Wide Window,” they’re forced to live with an elderly relative who’s deathly afraid of doorknobs and hot food. The kids are resourceful: Violet invents and thinks scientifically, Klaus is bookish and little Sunny likes to bite things with her four sharp teeth.
The series has a tone that is at once antiquarian and postmodern: the children find themselves locked up in castles or adrift on storm-tossed seas, but characters also use computers and credit cards.
“These books are obviously tongue-in-cheek, and kids get it,” continues LeFave. “They keep reading the series because they want to know if there’s ever going to be a good day [for the Baudelaire children].”
Snicket’s (i.e., Handler’s) writing style is heavily influenced by the morbid sensibility of Edward Gorey, leavened with the acerbic wit of Dorothy Parker, he says. His books-though designed for kids-are full of evocative place names such as Lake Lachrymose and towns called Tedia and Paltryville. He also fills his tales with literary allusions well over the heads of most pre-teens, with characters including Dr. Orwell and Vice Principal Nero.
Most interestingly, Snicket also includes many authorial digressions, wherein he increasing becomes a character in the books. An example from “The Austere Academy,” the fifth and most recent book: As I’m sure you know, a good night’s sleep helps you perform well in school, and so if you are a student you should always get a good night’s sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night…
The books’ popularity with kids and adults also surely owes something to their appealing packaging. The pocket-size hardcovers have old-style deckled-edge pages and understated neo-Victorian illustrations by artist Brett Helquist. “The design of the books makes them feel like they’re from another century,” says LeFave.
One last secret to the series’s success, which may be the most important one of all: averaging just 200 pages each, the books are short enough to be read in a day or two. Take that, Harry Potter.
