31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dreaded Dissapointment, November 7, 2005
This review is from: The Truth Behind A Series of Unfortunate Events: Eyeballs, Leeches, Hypnotism and Orphans --- Exploring Lemony Snicket's World (Hardcover)
I am a huge fan of the Series Of Unfortunate Events & found this book only slightly entertaining. It in no way added anything to the series in any way. If you have read the books & the Unauthorized biography then you have all the info you need to not waste your money on this book. If you have not read the Unathorized Biography I would recomend spending you money on that first!
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32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not an unpleasant book but an informative one, May 6, 2005
This review is from: The Truth Behind A Series of Unfortunate Events: Eyeballs, Leeches, Hypnotism and Orphans --- Exploring Lemony Snicket's World (Hardcover)
The claim on the back of "The Truth Behind A Series of Unfortunate Events: Eyeballs, Leeches, Hypnotism, and Orphans--Exploring Lemony Snicket's World" is that this volume is the "ultimate unauthorized companion guide to the facts behind Lemony Snicket's wild world." Since this is the only one I have seen it is hard to say whether that is hyperbole or not. What Lois Gresh has done in this book is to look beneath the fiction into the realities of the Lemony Snicket universe. Violet Baudelaire likes to invent things, so Gresh explains how to build a telephone and a hot-air balloon mobile home and throws in some fascinating tidbits about who really invented the telephone and little-known facts about hot-air balloons. Young readers will also be able to read about real child inventors and their amazing inventions. The information provided is much more expansive than you would find in an annotated edition of something, but that is the general intent.
Gresh has authored books on "The Computers of Star Trek" and "The Science of Superheroes," so stopping and taking time to explain things we just take for granted in enjoying stories is apparently her forte. So there are chapters devoted to "What Happens to Real Orphans," "Strange Snakes, Lizards, and Toads," "Martial Law: Can an Old Geezer Marry a Young Girl?", "Picking Locks, Horseradish, and Peppermints," "Work, Slave Work! Child Labor Laws," "Crabs, Fungi, Staples, and Leeches," and "I Want to Be Someone Else." If you have read the Lemony Snicket books then you will know which chapters look at the "reality" behind which books (e.g., the last in the list explains how Count Olaf would disguise himself in the real world). Then there are chapters that are devoted to testing your knowledge about "Really Bad Grammar" and "Fancy-Pants Words." You can also test yourself to see if you are as smart as Violet and Klaus (or Sunny when she was one) on questions that are related to what happens in the series and other that are not.
For many readers what their enjoyment of this book will not come down to how it conveniently provides information about topics of interest regarding the world of Lemony Snicket, but how much the attempt to emulate the narrative style and look of the books bothers them. The book is the same dimension as the Lemony Snicket volumes, but without the rough edges of the paper. The illustrations are done in pencil in the style of Brett Helquist and as long as they are not showing any of the Baudelair orphans they are decent enough (I suppose from a legal standpoint none of the images are "really" of any of the characters in the books but that little point of irony does not help this volume). Most importantly (or not) Gresh tries to adopt the writing style of Lemony Snicket, but without the same sort of success (i.e., she tries too hard). This book works better when she is just providing information and leaving the comedy to the original stories because this is not an unpleasant book, it is an informative one. There are some attempts at analyzing symbols and motifs in the books, but, again, it is the informational aspect rather than the analysis that the legion of Lemony Snicket fans who stumbled across this volume will enjoy.
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25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How could these unfortunate events be possible?, October 26, 2004
This review is from: The Truth Behind A Series of Unfortunate Events: Eyeballs, Leeches, Hypnotism and Orphans --- Exploring Lemony Snicket's World (Hardcover)
I've read all of Lemony Snicket's books. I love every one of them. This new book by Lois Gresh is the perfect companion to Lemony's books. The Truth Behind a Series of Unfortunate Events tells you everything you ever wondered about - like Count Olaf's tattoo and all the eye motifs in the
series: what does the eye mean and why does Lemony use it so much? This book gives you some bigtime clues based on real facts. How could Count Olaf possibly appear as so many different people, both men and women of all ages in all kinds of occupations, and actually get away with it? This book tells you how he does it! This is a book for kids who want to know how Lemony came up with Violet's inventions, how to pick locks, how someone can be allergic to peppermints, what happens to real orphans, and whether disgusting ancient guardian Counts can really marry young girls who are supposedly in their legal care. This is a 'tell all' book. If you're a Lemony Snicket fan, then you need this book.
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