Reading and watching A Series of Unfortunate Events

I remember watching several great TV shows based on books as a child, all of which I loved all the more because I already knew the characters. The TV version was never quite the same as in my head, but wonderful to watch all the same. I dreamed of turkish delight and the magical, wintery Narnia with Lucy, Peter, Susan and Edmund, wished I could go to boarding school and learn to ride a broomstick with Mildred and Maud and shared adventure after adventure with The Famous Five. They were books and stories that shaped my childhood, made extra special because of the addition of a TV adaptation.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

My own children all like to read, but hadn’t experienced watching something they had read until recently. I wrote about our first thoughts on the new Netflix series of A Series of Unfortunate Events a couple of weeks ago and I’m really pleased to say that the series has carried on living up to our ( high) expectations. We’ve now finished reading the four first books and my children are hoping to find the rest of the series in their school library, their imaginations well and truly captured by Lemony Snicket’s dark story telling of the very unfortunate Baudelaire siblings. We have shared their frustrations at not being able to get Mr Poe to see through Count Olaf’s many disguises, sighed with disappointment as the people who we thought were the children’s missing parents turned out to be someone else and giggled at hilarious baby Sunny. It’s been a fun few weeks of reading and watching. The Netflix series was so good, that had we not been so lacking in time recently we probably would’ve watched it a lot faster, but there’s not many times when all three of my children are at home together and so we’ve had to wait as no one wanted to miss out!

The opportunity to read-a-long to a TV series doesn’t happen often, but if it does arise again, I will take full advantage. Reading along made my children even keener to read the books as they couldn’t wait to find out what happened next and I think the TV series helped them visualise the characters and their terrible predicament more easily. They all became quite fond of the Baudelaire children, genuinely willing something nice to happen to them. As a parent it’s been lovely to watch and read together and has led to some rare and much needed calm time together as a family.

Have you been watching and reading? If not you can find the books on Egmont’s website here.

We are working with Egmont to help promote A Series of Unfortunate Events, but have honestly loved every second of the books and TV series.