It is 35th on the all-time list of best-selling series, worldwide.
However, I would argue that for books aimed at children under 12 or so, they aren’t the ones deciding which books to buy. Therefore, the OP brings up an interesting point: just because a children’s book is a bestseller, does it necessarily follow that children like it?
Of course they are. Children who are old enough to read are old enough to express an opinion about what they want to read, and many kids today (well, prior to the recession at least) make a lot of their own purchases with money their parents give them. While kids do receive books as gifts that adults think they’ll enjoy, these tend to be either books the adults remember fondly from their own childhood or books the adults think will be good for the children. The Lemony Snicket books don’t fall into either category. Once they became popular there must have been some adults who bought them as gifts for kids just because they were bestsellers, but the books couldn’t have become bestsellers in that way.
*I guess one could imagine a situation where a children’s book became a bestseller even though children didn’t like it, but that isn’t the case with A Series of Unfortunate Events. Kids did actually enjoy this series. I don’t know if it’s remained popular, but at the time the books were new kids got very excited about them.
This shouldn’t be difficult to believe. Children being orphaned and mistreated by their guardians is certainly nothing new in children’s fiction, so that’s not going to put kids off. Kids also tend to like fiction that’s kind of scary, especially if they’re also kind of funny/silly. The far less well-written kiddie horror series Goosebumps was hugely popular with elementary school children back in the '90s. And I’m sure many kids like the fact that in the Lemony Snicket books clever children regularly outwit mean grown ups. Although the Baudelaire orphans wind up in one bad situation after another, they’re much smarter than most of the adults they have to deal with and they’re constantly escaping from mortal peril through the use of their intelligence and special talents. For kids who like to read (and kids who don’t like to read don’t buy many books) it must be satisfying that Klaus’s reading ability is portrayed as important and useful.
Arnold,
I was the children’s book buyer for a fairly large book wholesaler when they initially came out, and I can attest to their continuing popularity. It wouldn’t have gotten to 13 episodes if the kids weren’t reading them.
I also saw the author, a good writer by the name of Daniel Handler, do a remarkable event at a children’s bookstore. The place was packed, attesting to the popularity. He did it all in character as friend of Lemony Snicket, who couldn’t make it. It captivated the kids, and clearly demonstrated how much he likes them.
Now, tastes vary, but I’d certainly recommend them to any parent to try.
Also that loyalty, love and family are some of the most important things in life. That being intelligent, creative and well-read is both useful and admirable. That everyone has unique talents that should be cultivated, because they may save the day. That precisely because life can really suck, moments of happiness are to be treasured. That no matter how bad things are, they could be worse. That seemingly insurmountable problems can be solved.
Can you tell I loved these books when I was a kid?
They were fun, interesting, unlike anything else I’d read and made me laugh. I learned a whole lot of new words and expressions from them too.
Personally, I was wondering why Klaus didn’t just look up a formula for an explosive in his books, then Violet would tie her hair back and rig up an invention that would cause Count Olaf’s toilet to explode when he flushed it.
Plus, my opinion was that the writing was “pretentious”, which is here defined as “believing that the use of a large vocabulary makes one more intelligent.”
And Sunny would cook him something that gave him the shits!
My only wish now is that they would be available in e-book form, so I could have the series without needing to add 13 volumes to my overloaded bookcase. I am sure I missed half the literary references.
I’m sure I missed some too, but of the ones I caught the one that surprised/impressed me most came from The Ersatz Elevator, where there’s a fleeting reference to Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. I definitely wouldn’t have gotten that one as a kid.
My kids loved them and read them when they first came out. Shibblets are 14 and 12 now, so do the math on what age they were at the time. They read them AND listened to them on CD during long drives. My daughter is now amused to learn who Tim Curry is.
I should say that the last one or two books were a let down, and the film was also not what it could have been. Too much Jim Carey in it.