State Library of Kansas  :  Kansas Center for the Book  :  Letters About Literature  :  Past Winners

2007 Winner: Francesca Hutton, Wichita (Level 2)

Book Title: A Series of Unfortunate Events (series)

Book Author: Daniel Handler

Dear Mr. Lemony Snicket (a.k.a. Mr. Daniel Handler):

For many years, I have been a very faithful reader of your deplorable and depressing Unfortunate Event series. I gloomily plowed through each and every book, often finding it almost impossible to put the hopeless and often miserable series down long enough to do my intolerable homework and sleep a dreadful slumber at night. The reason I’m writing this worthless letter to you is to inform you about my pitiful feelings after reading your supposedly last contemptible book in the series, The End.

Please be sure that I loved each and every book of your deplorable and depressing Unfortunate Event series. I read each book with dread and alarm. Oh, how I wanted something really awful and frightening to happen to that conniving and corrupt villain, Count Olaf. That despicable and evil monster never once got an ounce of my humble sympathy. He was rotten to the core, if he did indeed have a disgusting core. I felt pained for those poor Baudelaire children who often fell victim to the venom and wickedness of that vile Olaf. I stuck with the miserable series as many faithful but destitute readers would. It was with tremendous agony and torment that I desperately finished book twelve, The Penultimate Peril, hoping for some lousy answers and grungy explanations as to what would become of the three very unlucky Baudelaire children.

With many ghastly questions left unanswered, it was with shaky contentment and delight that I learned of yet your next and supposedly last vicious and horrible book in the series, The End. I waited disgracefully and impatiently for the last of your vicious and horrible series. At last it arrived terminally late, but none the less, it arrived. I frantically plowed through it as I did the earlier loathsome twelve books. Once again often finding it almost impossible to put the hopeless and miserable book down long enough to do my deplorable homework and sleep a dreadful slumber at night.

Mr. Snicket, please I miserably beg of you. I cannot accept The End as the last of your vicious and horrible series. The End cannot really be the end. No, Mr. Snicket, there must be one more revolting book written to complete this hideous series. You left too many unnerving and unanswered questions. Please, one more senseless book. That’s all. Then, perhaps I will be informed as to what was inside the sugar bowl, what happened to the Quagmire triplets and most importantly, what becomes of the Baudelaires after they leave the island. I need closure to these outlandish, deplorable mysteries. Is it really The End? Do not disappoint me.

Very Miserably (but hopeful) Yours,
Francesca Hutton

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