File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents

September 1, 2014
This title contains 13 short stories from Lemony Snicket’s youthful time in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, a declining seaside town. While residing there with his indifferent mentor, Snicket solved mysteries such as a dog abduction, a case of stolen spoons, the cause of ghostly apparitions, and who was behind incidents of vandalism and theft. Written with his usual clever wordplay and accurate but lighthearted vocabulary definitions, the stories have just enough clues for the listeners figure out the culprits. The readers’ voices may sound familiar to parents and children who ride in NPR-listening cars: Sarah Vowell, Ira Glass, Terry Gross, and Rachel Maddow all maintain their distinctive tones while giving characters unique identities. And somehow, the Snicket character sounds uniform across all thirteen stories. The varied voices keep listeners’ interest, and every one of them is “in” on Snicket’s sly wit and dark humor. What other children’s book would contain an sledding joke about Ethan Frome? The end of each story is told at the end of the audiobook. This makes for awkward listening. Listeners have to choose either to remember all the cliffhangers and listen to the resolutions all at once, or to skip ahead in the tracks and find the appropriate ending. Flipping back and forth in a print book would be much simpler. But in a print version, there would not be the joy of hearing the molasses-slow baritone of Stephin Merritt read words by Lemony Snicket—a job for which Mr. Merritt is eminently suited. Ages 8–up. A Little, Brown hardcover.

Starred review from April 1, 2014
How many mysteries lurk in the no-longer-seaside town of Stain'd-by-the-Sea? Thirteen. Collected herein, only for members of a certain secret organization (for nonmembers: This is a blank book; please move along), are 13 short investigations by young Lemony Snicket from the days of his apprenticeship in the increasingly deserted and mysterious town of Stain'd-by-the-Sea. The remaining residents, having heard of his investigations, bring him cases: Rare amphibians have gone missing; family heirlooms have been stolen; missives have been momentarily mislaid. Is there a demon on the docks at midnight? Is there a ghost haunting Old Lady Mann? As he ruminates, which here means to contemplate rather than to chew repeatedly, over the larger mysteries left in the wake of his previous investigations, Snicket solves small cases; readers can match wits as the solutions are only presented in a subfile at the volume's end. Snicket (the author, aka Daniel Handler) gifts fans of his All the Wrong Questions quartet of tongue-in-cheek noir mysteries with a Volume 2.5 that expands the setting and characters of the main series while offering an homage to Donald Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown. Literary allusions and witty wordplay abound as expected, with the added fun of getting to play detective. Fans can still look forward to Volume 3 of All the Wrong Questions, coming in October 2014: fabulous (which here means "very good" rather than "not real"). (Mystery/short stories. 8-14)

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May 1, 2014

Gr 4-6-In his signature Snickety style, the author of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" (HarperCollins) and creator of that oddball little town known as Stain'd by the Sea offers 13 case files reminiscent of Donald Sobol's Two-Minute Mysteries (Scholastic, 1969). Set in the same locale as the previous installments in the "All the Wrong Questions" titles and starring a young Lemony Snicket investigating strange occurrences as part of his apprenticeship for a shady "secret organization," this companion book can be enjoyed by die-hard fans as well as readers new to the series. Each mini-mystery-just a few pages long-is chock-full of wordplay, clever dialogue, noir references, and red herrings. The short chapters end with a cliff-hanger and kids may consult "Sub-file B" at the back of the work to see how the brilliant young detective solved the crime. Black-and-white illustrations highlight key details and provide a few subtle clues along the way. Though there is a narrative thread connecting the individual tales, readers can also delve into the separate cases one-by-one with equal enjoyment. By the end, not all mysteries are solved, nor all questions answered; whodunit aficionados will want to revisit again and again.-Kiera Parrott, School Library Journal

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