Kids into Books: The Bad Beginning

Author: Lemony Snicket

Illustrator: Brett Helquist

Publisher: Harper Collins, $17.95

Age group: 8-12 years


Sunny Baudelaire, the youngest, liked to bite things. She was an infant, and very small for her age, scarcely larger than a boot.

What she lacked in size, however, she made up for with the size and sharpness of her four teeth.

Sunny was at an age where one mostly speaks in a series of unintelligible shrieks. Except when she used the few actual words in her vocabulary, like "bottle," "mommy," and "bite," most people had trouble understanding what it was that Sunny was saying.

For instance, this morning she was saying "Gack!" over and over, which probably meant, "Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!"