The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 11)
by Lemony Snicket
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lemony SnicketIllustrator: Brett Helquist
Illustrator: Michael Kupperman
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-09-21
ISBN: 0064410145
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Book Reviews of The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 11)
Book Review: Shades of Gray and Getting Grayer
Summary: 5 Stars
Well, I've reached the end of the line for the "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books, and I need to wait until September for the next one to come out. To recap, the three Baudelaire orphans, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, have sadly been through a series of some of the most unfortunate events ever to occur to a trio of intelligent children. Violet, who is now 15 years old, is a master inventor who can use almost anything at her fingertips to build amazing machines that can be used for a variety of purposes, including helping herself and her siblings get out of some rather nasty predicaments. The now-13-year-old Klaus is an extremely intelligent researcher, who loves to read and can remember everything he picks up in a book. These skills constantly come in handy when the children are forced to figure out tough mysteries and problems in very short amounts of time. And finally, Sunny, who has recently grown out of infanthood, has been endowed with extremely sharp teeth that allow her to bite her way out of many troubling situations. Lately, she has been developing impressive culinary skills as well.
After receiving some very troubling news about a terrible fire that killed their parents, the three children were sent to live with an obscure relative named Count Olaf. Olaf was a terrible guardian who tried to steal the Baudelaire family fortune that the children had inherited. After trying to marry (yes, marry!) Violet in order to get the money, the children moved in with their loving uncle. Sadly, Olaf appeared in disguise and once again tried to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune.
This went on for a while until the children were sent to a strict boarding school where they met Duncan and Isadora Quagmire, two of three triplets who also lost their wealthy parents and their brother Quigley, the third triplet, in a terrible fire. Like the Baudelaires, the Quagmires each had their own special skills. Duncan was a journalist, Isadora was a poet, and Quigley, before the fire, was a cartographer. The children became fast friends, until Olaf was able to capture the Quagmires. Right before he took them away though, they were able to tell the Baudelaires about something they needed to find with the initials V.F.D.
Eventually, the three children were able to save their friends, but at the same time, Olaf was able to frame the siblings for murder, and the Baudelaires were forced to flee from the police to a hospital in the middle of nowhere. Once there, they discovered many more secrets regarding V.F.D., which they learned was a secret society. After escaping the hospital, which had been set on fire by Olaf, the children were forced to go into disguise as carnival freaks in order to learn more about V.F.D. from Olaf and his crew. There they learned about an important sugar bowl that Olaf needed to find, and later, they had to assist Olaf in burning down the carnival in order to maintain their disguises. Sadly, Olaf discovered them, kidnapped Sunny, and sent Violet and Klaus careening down a snowy mountain in a runaway caravan. The siblings survived and found out that Quigley was in fact still alive. Violet, Klaus, and Quigley were able to rescue Sunny, find out the last safe place that V.F.D. would go, and escape Olaf yet again. And this is where The Grim Grotto begins.
The Baudelaires, after being seperated from Quigley, the Baudelaires are found by a V.F.D. submarine captained by a man named Widdershins, and crewed by his step-daughter Fiona and Phil the Optimist from the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. They embark on a mission to recover the sugar bowl before Olaf and the crew of the Carmelita (Olaf's sub named after the bratty Carmelita Spats) do. Along the way, we learn some family history of one of Olaf's associates which turns out to come back to hurt the Baudelaires and Fiona.
This is one of the best books yet in the series (although I'm still going with the fact that The Hostile Hospital is the best). Throughout the last few books, the Baudelaires have been wondering about whether or not they themselves have been turning into villains themselves because they have been disguising themselves, they participated in arson, and they considered trapping Esme Squalor in order to participate in a prisoner exchange to get Sunny back. In this book, the shades of gray get even grayer. When Sunny is poisoned by some mushrooms that will kill her within the hour, they have to consider allowing her to die in order to preserve the greater good. They also are forced to come to terms with the fact that even the people "noble" side of the V.F.D. schism have bad qualities to them, even their parents.
The stakes continue to get raised, as Olaf's troupe has now grown to a number big enough to crew an enormous submarine while V.F.D. struggles to remain a force for them to reckon with. Amazingly, even though things are still dire at the end, Snicket is able to leave us with a small note of hope while we wait until the next book is released.
Summary of The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 11)
Warning: Your day will become very dark - and possibly damp - if you read this book.
Plan to spend this spring in hiding. Lemony Snicket is back with the eleventh book in his New York Times bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Lemony Snicket's saga about the charming, intelligent and grossly unlucky Baudelaire orphans continues to provoke suspicion and despair in readers the world over. In the eleventh and most alarming volume yet in the bestselling phenomenon A Series of Unfortunate Events, the intrepid siblings delve further into the dark mystery surrounding the death of their parents and the baffling VFD organisation.
Ages 9+
It's tough when the things that stand between you and your desired sugar bowl are a host of deadly mushrooms and an uncomfortable diving suit. The unlucky Baudelaire orphans find themselves in deep (once again) in this eleventh book in Lemony Snicket's odd-and-full-of-woe-but-quite-funny Series of Unfortunate Events. In The Grim Grotto, the siblings find themselves headed down Stricken Stream on a broken toboggan when they are spotted by the submarine Queequeg, carrying Captain Widdershins, his somewhat volatile stepdaughter Fiona, and optimistic Phil from Lucky Smells Lumbermill. The adventures that follow as the crew tries to get to the aforementioned sugar bowl before Count Olaf are so horrible that the narrator inserts factual information about the water cycle so that readers will get bored and stop reading the book. It doesn't work. As per usual, readers will want to soak up every awf! ul detail and follow the Baudelaires all the way back to the place we first met them--Briny Beach. (Ages 9 and older) --Karin Snelson
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