Who is Lemony Snicket?įirst things first: If for some reason, you don’t know this, Lemony Snicket is both a fictional character and an “author.” In real life, Lemony Snicket is the pen name of author Daniel Handler, but in the context of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Snicket is also a colorful character, a person who knew the parents of the Baudelaire orphans, and whose siblings - Jacques Snicket and Kit Snicket - have powerful and pivotal roles in those books. So, with that in mind, is the latest book carrying the name “Lemony Snicket” in that same tradition? Is this really a book for the same (grade school-aged) kids who read, and loved the other books? The short answer is kind of. The Snicket books have always pushed the boundary of what a children’s book can be and unlike some more popular books (*cough Harry Potter*) the stories don’t rely on magic or the notion of a “chosen one.” In the Lemony Snicket universe, problems are solved by invention, knowledge, and sometimes cooking. It’s a whole world of philosophy, adventure, and dark, sometimes macabre humor. The stories of the Baudelaire orphans, and later, Snicket himself, are more than just engaging mysteries. If you’ve only ever watched the fantastic Netflix series, that’s good, but it also means you haven’t experienced the full brilliance of what makes Lemony Snicket so funny, meditative, and straight-up cool.

A Series of Unfortunate Events and the prequel series All the Wrong Questions are some of the best contemporary novels- period. The books of Lemony Snicket are among some of the greatest middle-grade novels ever written.

Lemony snicket books