A Series of Unfortunate Events – The Austere Academy

The Austere Academy is the boarding school one, a bleak mystery for 10 year olds that is funnier than it has any right to be, and one of Lemony Snicket's nastiest settings yet.

What happens

He opens by handing out an imaginary gold medal for the least delightful person on Earth. It goes to a girl called Carmelita Spats, who would have snatched it off you anyway.

She shoves straight past the three Baudelaires shouting "cakesniffers" at them. None of them knows what the word means. Neither does their banker, who thinks it sounds nice and reminds him of pastry.

Then they look up at Prufrock Preparatory School. Grey stone, an enormous arch, and every building the same shape, a rectangle with a rounded top. The children can only think of one thing that shape is, and it is a gravestone. The motto carved over the arch is Memento Mori.

Mr Poe does not notice any of this. He says the buildings look like thumbs. He explains that the school has an advanced computer with Count Olaf's description in it, and that this will keep the children safe, and he uses the word advanced as though it settles the matter.

Violet is fourteen and would normally be first through the door. Klaus is twelve. Sunny is a baby who mostly wants to bite things.

The best bit is the walk up to the gate. All three are too shy to look up. Violet is quietly designing a machine to stop moss growing on the bricks and can't bring herself to mention it. Klaus is thinking about a book he once read called Moss Mysteries and can't bring that up either.

It's four lines about moss and it tells you everything about how nervous they are.

Then the sad part, because these books are built on one. The Baudelaire parents died in a fire before any of this started. The narrator lists what the children have already survived in one breath, and the list includes kidnapping, murder, poison and hypnosis.

None of it is dwelt on and none of it is new here. It is all told as things already behind them. Even so, if your child has a wobble about parents dying or about being sent somewhere with nobody kind in it, this series is a hard one to start.

For a child who can take it, the pleasure is watching three very clever children get absolutely no help. The grown ups mean well, or don't, and either way they are useless. Violet, Klaus and Sunny have to work everything out themselves.

What to read next

Do start at the start though. The Bad Beginning is the one to open first. That's a grey morning at Briny Beach, Violet skipping stones and Klaus poking about in a tide pool, and a tall figure walking towards them out of the fog with something to tell them.