A Series of Unfortunate Events – The Ersatz Elevator

Lemony Snicket's The Ersatz Elevator is a gloomy, extremely funny mystery for 10 year olds who enjoy being told to stop reading.

What happens

The narrator opens by advising you to put the book down and pick up a dictionary instead. The dictionary, he points out, contains the word "bubble" and the word "peacock". This book contains "grief" and "despair".

He then explains the difference between nervous and anxious. Nervous is being served prune ice cream. Anxious is being served a live alligator, because now you don't know which of you is eating which.

That's the tone all the way through. He keeps interrupting himself to define a word, or to apologise for what's about to happen, or to mention how much he'd rather be writing something else.

The three children are Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire. Violet is fourteen and invents things. Klaus is twelve and has read so much he says "compatriots" when he means friends. Sunny is a baby roughly the size of a salami, with four alarmingly sharp teeth and a language of her own.

They're being delivered to new guardians by Mr Poe, a banker who has been in charge of them for a while now and has been no use whatsoever. He has just been promoted to Vice President in Charge of Orphan Affairs. He coughs into a handkerchief after nearly everything he says.

Their new address is the penthouse at 667 Dark Avenue, where enormous trees spread out overhead like a leafy ceiling and block every scrap of daylight.

The joke about the neighbourhood is glorious. The people there decide what's in and what's out, and it changes constantly. Right now dark is in. A fortnight ago light was in and you needed sunglasses to walk down the street. Lifts, unfortunately, are also out.

Somewhere behind all this is Count Olaf. One long eyebrow, a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, and designs on the children's money.

Two things before you start. This one sits a good way into the series and the book assumes you know that. The children's friends have already been snatched. There's a secret called V.F.D. that nobody will explain. Your reader can follow the plot from here, but a fair bit of the weight will pass them by.

The other thing is the bleakness, which is the point rather than an accident. The Baudelaire parents died in a fire before the first book opens. So did one of their friends' brothers. No adult in charge is either kind or competent. It's all delivered with a straight face and an arched eyebrow, and most children find it hilarious, but a child who takes things to heart might not be in on the joke.

What to read next

For the same narrator being miserable somewhere else entirely, try When Did You See Her Last. He's the detective this time, almost thirteen, stuck in a dreadful hotel, still breaking off mid-sentence to explain a word.