My Letter to Lemony Snicket...

June 11, 2015

Dear Mr. Lemony Snicket,

I regret to inform you that I recently had the misfortune of reading The Bad Beginning.  In fact, to compound this misery, seventy-six of my sixth grade students joined me in this extreme streak of bad luck.  For the past two weeks we have been distressing daily over the injustices suffered by the Baudelaire orphans.  Many of us have lost sleep in order to learn if the children survived yet another round of evil.  As distressing as the loss of their parents was, reading about the horrendous Count Olaf was almost more than we could bear. Personally I found myself regularly urging the children to run, run as fast as they could to find the police.  I am sure many people thought I had lost my marbles if they observed me yelling at the book.  I did not have the heart to explain my agony and spoil their day by sharing the misery of the Baudelaire orphans.

 I am also curious if there may be more to Mr. Poe than meets the eye.  His miserable cough does have the effect of making one feel sorry for him.  However, I fear that Mr. Poe is hiding a mysterious past. Is it possible his cough is actually a nervous reaction that occurs only when he fears other are close to discovering his secret?  It does seem as if the great misfortune affecting the Baudelaire orphans is the complete lack of stable, reliable adults in their lives, starting with the loss of their parents. (And I am not at all convinced their parents are dead.  I fear Count Olaf may be holding them prisoner on a remote and dreary island. Maybe someone needs to investigate further?)

Unfortunately, tomorrow is our last day of school.  I feel I must share with you the sad news that many of my students, myself included, will continue to read about the Baudelaire orphans over the summer. While that is certainly a gloomy way to spend one’s summer, we feel we need to continue on this journey with the orphans.  We will regularly be venturing into our public libraries in order to search for the rest of the volumes detailing the sad misfortunes of the orphans.

Sadly,

An Unfortunate Reader