A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Austere Academy (Book 5) by Lemony Snicket

[Alina]

Violet, Klaus and Sunny head over to Prufrock Preparatory School where they first meet Carmelita Spats, who is a delightful little girl in any adult eyes and a troublemaker little brat in a students eyes. The school is very old and has moss covering the walkways and the sides of the buildings. When Mr. Poe leaves them to go to back to the city, Klaus reads the schools motto, which reads “Memento Mori”. Klaus says this is a strange motto for a school as this motto is written in Latin, and when you have read as many books as Klaus has then I guess that you can guess that this means “Remember you will die”. If the school’s motto is strange enough, there’s more. The buildings, if you look closely, looks like gravestone, and Vice Principal Nero is a complete weirdo if you want to describe him this way. You see, or I should say think of the worse sound you have ever heard. Got it. Now multiple that sound by ten. If that doesn’t want you to close your eyes and nearly scream then I guess you haven’t heard Nero’s violin yet. The rules at this school are completely out of this world. One: If you go to the administrative building, you will not be allowed to use silverware at meal times. Two: If you are late for class, your hands will be tied behind your back during meals. Three: If you are late to meals, you lose your cups and glasses and drinks will be served in large puddles. Four: You have too sit though Nero’s violin recital for six hours or you will have to buy Nero a large bag of candy. Five: If you’re an orphan going to the school, you live in the orphan shack, where there are tiny and large territorial crabs, bales of hay for sleeping, a light tan fungus that drops moisture and very ugly wallpaper on this tin shack that was light green and had little hearts on them. The orphans learn that the classes at this school and pointless and boring. Violet’s teacher is a Mr. Remora who eats a lot of bananas and tells stories about his life that afterward he gives a little quiz about the stories and everyone has to remember the details. Klaus’s teacher is no better, Ms. Bass is a teacher who is obsess with the metric system and has everyone measuring nearly everything in the classroom and expects everyone to remember the measurements for any quiz she gives and Sunny can become Nero’s secretary, as they can’t teach a baby anything. Later, the orphans meet the Quagmire triplets at lunch. The Quagmires tell them that their parents died in a fire too and after the Violet mistaken calls them twins, Duncan and Isadora sadly say that they were triplets but their brother Quigley died in the fire take took their parents lives. Klaus says that they meant no disrespect to his memory. After a few days of living within the walls of the school, Violet, Klaus and Sunny are certain that Count Olaf won’t be able to fool the advanced computer that is programmed to identify his facial features, but their luck runs out when Coach Genghis comes to the campus. Suddenly, Coach Genghis has the orphans run laps around a glow-in-the-dark circle in the yard in front of the school until it’s dawn and the orphans don’t have the slightest clue as to what his plan is this time to steal their fortune. Duncan and Isadora help them by trying to identify where his helpers might by hiding but it’s not enough. One day, when the orphans get called into Nero’s office, He says that they have missed nine of his violin concerts and if you remember rule four, they will have to give them twenty nine bags of candy, even though his math is wrong and its twenty seven bags, they own Carmelita Spats ten tips for delivering ten messages and those ten tips are in the form of earrings and above it all, they have been failing in their classes and Sunny in her secretary duties . He says that he will give them up to Coach Genghis if they fail their comprehensive exams which will be given to them in the morning. Now they have problems, all because of S.O.R.E. Will Violet, Klaus and Sunny be able to pass the class or run laps until Count Olaf grabs them?

I have seen the Netflix series for this show. In the Netflix show, this book starts the second season. In the episode, The librarian is introduced as Olivia Caliban, Klaus and Isadora found out they have two pieces of the same type of spyglass, one that belonged to Klaus’s parents and the other to Isadora’s parents, a book they need to find that was supposed to be given to them by Larry but Larry was attacked by Count Olaf and put into the freezer and the book was misplaced, Carmelita helps Count Olaf get into the school. These events are never mentioned in the book and never happen. I would rate this book 5 out of 5 stars because of the reasons that Count Olaf gives to keep his running shoes and turban on his head and feet as they don’t make much sense to me.

Rate: 5 out of 5 stars