The Austere Academy (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 5)
As the three Baudelaire orphans warily approach their new home--Prufrock  Preparatory School--they can't help but notice the enormous stone arch bearing  the school's mottoMemento Mori, or "Remember you will die." This is not  a cheerful greeting, and certainly marks an inauspicious beginning to a very  bleak story. Of course, this is what we have come to expect from Lemony  Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, the deliciously morbid set of books that  began withThe Bad  Beginningand only got worse.InThe Austere Academy, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are at first  optimistic--attending school is a welcome change for the book-loving trio, and  the academy is allegedly safe from the dreaded Count Olaf, who is after their  fortune. Hope dissipates quickly, however, when they meet Vice Principal Nero, a  self-professed genius violinist who sneeringly imitates their every word. More  dreadful still, he houses them in the tin Orphans Shack, crawling with  toe-biting crabs and dripping with a mysterious tan fungus. A beam of light  shines through the despair when the Baudelaires meet the Quagmires, two of three  orphaned triplets who are no strangers to disaster and sympathize with their  predicament. When Count Olaf appears on the scene disguised as Coach Genghis  (covering his monobrow with a turban and his ankle tattoo with expensive running  shoes), the Quagmires resolve to come to the aid of their new friends. Sadly,  this proves to be a hideous mistake.Snicket disarms us again with his playful juxtapositions--only he can compare  bombs with strawberry shortcake (both are as dangerous to make as assumptions),  muse on how babies adjust developmentally to the idea of curtains, or ponder why  the Baudelaire orphans would not want to be stalks of celery despite their  incessant bad luck as humans. We can't get enough of this splendid series of  misadventures, and can only wager that swarms of young readers will be right  next to us in line for the next installment. (Ages 9 and older)--Karin  Snelson