The Bad Beginning
by Lemony Snicket (HarperCollins, 1999); audiobook read by Tim Curry (Harper Audio, 2004)
As with fairy tales, the children’s circumstances and the characterisations are taken to unnatural extremes. Tim Curry’s (and cast’s) audiobook reading exacerbates this remove from reality. The piecemeal in-text defining of words is merely condescension masquerading as education, which grows quickly tedious.