Kids into Books: The Bad Beginning

Author: Lemony Snicket

Illustrator: Brett Helquist

Publisher: Harper Collins, $17.95

Age group: 8-12 years


Violet Baudelaire, the eldest, liked to skip rocks. Like most fourteen-year-olds, she was right-handed, so the rocks skipped farther across the murky water when Violet used her right hand than when she used her left.

As she skipped rocks, she was looking out at the horizon and thinking about an invention she wanted to build.

Anyone who knew Violet well cold tell she was thinking hard, because her long hair was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes.

Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers and gears and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair.

This morning she was thinking about how to construct a device that could retrieve a rock after you had skipped it into the ocean.