The Carnivorous Carnival

by Lemony Snicket

Book Overview

paperback book

Customer Reviews

The Carnivorous Carnival will eat you up!

The Baudelaire orphans left "The Hostile Hospital" in the trunk of Count Olaf's car; clearly a potentially very dangerous situation for Violet, Klaus and baby Sunny. However, once again the children use their wits to figure out how to escape their predicament. The children find themselves in a rundown carnival with another bizarre cast of characters, including several supposed "freaks." However, the freaks are not really all that freakish, one being a contortionist and one being ambidextrous. The children disguise themselves as freaks and manage to fool Count Olaf and his gang for most of the book. However, as we all know, eventually Count Olaf finds the children and another harrowing ending ensues. Over the last two or three books we've been given tidbits about bigger mysteries surrounding the children and their parents. In this book the tidbits become much more substantial and give us a clue as to the direction the series might take. While it may seem that my description is a bit vague, that is because I do not wish to give away any of the surprises in this book, and there is at least one very big surprise for the children and the reader, as well as a number of smaller surprises. Because of the twists and turns, I am unable to provide the description I normally do for books in this series. As I noted earlier, there are a lot of surprises. Those surprises make for one of the most intriguing books in this series. I am anxiously anticipating the next volume, and even more, the end of the series, when I am hoping that Lemony Snicket will reveal all the mysteries. This particular entry in the series does involve death, again, and in your imagination the death is likely somewhat gruesome. Fortunately the amount of description given to the death is minimal and is left mostly to the reader's imagination. Because of several intense moments, and the death, I would recommend this book for children 9 and older, though as always you should know the ability of your child to handle books similar to this one. This book does have its educational moments, though somewhat muted in comparison to some of the other entries in this series. Overall, the continued challenge to the paradigm that children's books for the stated age range should be relatively tame along with the creativity of this particular book requires a rating of 5 stars. This book is yet another solid entry in this series, which just seems to get better and better.

IF YOU HAVE ANY SENSE YOU"LL READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!!

Sorry 'bout the title. But seriously, this is a book you won't to miss the new book in the series. Sometimes you'll find that people say that Lemony Snicket's(Daniel Handler actually)occasional comments are intrusive and annoying, but I find them to be interesting,explanatory,decisive,humorous, and they build up the suspense. In the book Violet,Klaus,and Sunny find themselves in the trunk of Count Olaf's car. Then in a "carnival" the Baudelaire children dress up as freaks in order to obtain information about the possibility of a surviving parent. They are rudely insulted along with the other not so freakish freaks, when they find out one freak will be thrown into a pit of lions(won't tell you the rest, you'll have to find out for yourself!). I just got the book today, and when I started I couldn't put it down. I just finished it a few hours ago, and it never gets boring.LEMONY SNICKET HAS DONE IT AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sometimes the carnival is no fun at all..........

Justin PergoliniRoom 22I am a fifth grade student at Waldron Mercy Academy(JP).The book I am reviewing is THE CARNIVOUROUS CARNIVAL by LEMONY SNICKET.PLEASE RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.THIS REVIEW IS DANGOURUS AND MUST BE ERASED. You could not possibly want to hear the horrible events in this book...that is what Lemony Snicket whould say if he was typing this. Unlike Lemony Snicket this book is one of the best books I've ever read. Trouble has struck again for the Bualdeluares. Our story begins with the Bauldeluares in the trunk of Count Olafs long black car. The Bauldelaures are three orphans named Violet,Klaus,and Sunny whose parents died in a horrible fire. Count Olaf is a greedy man who has followed the Bauldelaures everywhere they go trying to steal the orphan's fortune and has faked his own death and blamed the poor Bauldelueres for the murder. The Bualdelueres have left their recent ''home'' at Hemlich Hospital, which I am sorry to say is no more, and found a small glimmer of light in its library of records............. The Bualdelaures arrive at Calarigi Carnival (which I am sorry to say is no more either) where they hear of a fortuneteller who is telling Olaf where the orphans are all the time. The Bauldelaures disguise themselves as freaks to get a job at the carnivals house of freaks. It's horrible there as the Bualdelares are treated harshly on stage. They are in even more danger when Count Olaf announces the next big attraction at the carnival:feeding some lions one freak a day that is randomly selected from a hat. But that night the Bualdelares find out a little secret about the fortuneteller...But I am afraid that tragedy strikes again for the Bauldelares and this dark road is very long indeed...........

Only four more to go, and the stakes keep getting higher!

Second only to the Harry Potter books, "A Series of Unfortunate Events" is the best children's/adult series I have read in some time. To say these books are only for kids is the same as saying Bugs Bunny cartoons are only for kids - BULL!"The Carnivorous Carnival" is Book the Ninth in the proposed 13-book series - in this one, we re-join Violet, Klaus, and baby Sunny Beaudelaire in the trunk of Count Olaf's long, sinister black getaway car; the orphans hid there at the end of "The Hostile Hospital" as their only means of escape, since everyone is looking for them after the local paper, "The Daily Punctilio," branded them murderers of Count Omar - who, in reality, is Count Olaf, and he is very much alive. Count Olaf drives his troupe of theater performers/criminals way out to the hinterlands, to the Caligari Carnival. There they greet Madame Lulu, the owner of the carnival and a personal friend of Count Olaf. At their first opportunity, the children escape the trunk of the car - but where to go, now that they are stuck way out in the hinterlands, with everyone thinking they are murderers?Easy - they adapt Count Olaf's methods of trickery and disguise. In each previous book, Count Olaf has found the orphans in their newest home and, in disguise, plots to get his hands on them and their fortune. Now it's the Beaudelaire siblings' turn - using stuff found in the count's own disguise kit, the children dress themselves up as freaks and actually join the carnival with Violet and Klaus as the two-headed freak Beverly/Elliot, and Sunny donning an old beard Olaf wore from a previous book and becoming Chabo the Wolf Baby. When they join the contortionist, hunchback, and ambidextrous man in the freak show at Madame Lulu's House of Freaks, right under Count Olaf's nose, the orphans think they will finally be able to learn the secrets of V.F.D. and whether one of their parents really may have survived the fire that had made them orphans in the first place.But everything is not what it seems at Caligari Carnival, and soon the Beaudelaire's are in more trouble than ever before. After eight books of Olaf in disguise trying to steal the Beaudelaire children (and their fortune), it was a great twist to find the children in diguise trying to thwart Olaf's latest scheme! Really, these books are THE BOMB, funny and exciting and real page-turners for anyone of any age. With each book we feel we are closer to finding out all the secrets hinted at, but then something happens to tease our curiosity even more, making us wait breathlessly for the next installment. I thought "The Hostile Hospital" ended on a cliffhanger, that was NOTHING compared to "The Carnivorous Carnival," and with 4 more books to go (there will be 13 total, as there are 13 chapters in each book chronicling the sad, unlucky lives of these unfortunate orphans), Lemony Snicket will surely drive us readers crazy by the end with our unanswered questions about V.F.D., Beatrice, the possible surviva

Back in the Belly of the Beast

When we last left the Baudelaire orphans at the cliff-hanging ending of the 8th book in the Series of Unfortunate Events series, The Hostile Hospital, Sunny, Klaus and Violet were hiding in bullet hole-ridden trunk of Count Olaf's car on their way to parts unknown. As it so happens, the orphans are out of the frying pan into the fire in this new book, a phrase that herein means, "have gone from one bad situation where Violet was barely saved from certain unnecessary surgery, into a possible worse one by hiding in the trunk of the Count's car."The count, as it turns out, is barreling off with his troope of odd characters to the tent of Madame Lulu the fortune teller, who lives far out in the Hinterlands. Like other books in this Unfortunate Series, the orphans continue to be in mortal peril (a phrase that herein means "dreadful danger") as they avoid the clutches of Count Olaf. Managing to disguise themselves as carnival freaks, they take up residence in Madame Lulu's freak show aside a humpback, a contortionist and a very glum ambidexterous fellow who can use either hands equally well.Madame Lulu, who may not be all that she appears to be, has mysteriously always provided the Count with information about the Baudelaire trio, which finally explains how exactly he always knows where they are and how to find them. She drops hints that one of the orphan's parents may have survived the fire that apparently killed them back in book #1 (The Bad Beginning), and she gets oh-so-close to explaining the true meaning of VFD, and readers of the series and of Mr. Snicket's unauthorized biography are lead tantalizingly close to the answers for which they've sought about VFD and why Count Olaf, Jaques Snicket and Madame Lulu have tattoos or insignia of an eye on or about them. Pieces of the puzzle are just beginning to fit together, but not...quite...This is, of course, the ninth book in the series, and Mr. Snicket gives us some hints, as he always does, at the end of the story to the next book in the series, which I assume will be called "The Slippery Slope." Readers who have read up to this point will be delighted and enthralled by the mysteries that peek out here and there throughout the book, like prarie dogs peeking out of their burrows before quickly disappearing again. If you have not yet read books 1-8 in the series, it is recommended that you do so before attacking "Carnivorous Carnival", as much of what happens in this story won't make sense if you've not been following the sad lives of the Baudelaire orphans since the beginning. From this quiet part of the world ;) this reviewer and constant reader of the Series highly recommends this and other books in the series.