A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all of the man-and woman-eating lions were running around loose.' And so it is for the bad-luck Baudelaires. An afternoon at the movie theater, for instance, would be a mixed bag if your favorite movie were showing, but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. As our ever sad but helpful narrator states, 'Although 'a mixed bag' sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. Where will the orphans end up next? Perhaps the seventh installment, The Vile Village, will shed light on their fate.Fans of Lemony Snicket's wonderful Series of Unfortunate Events won't be surprised to find that in the sixth installment the three Baudelaire orphans' new home proves to be something of a mixed bag. As always, the alliterative titles are delightful and Brett Helquist provides some wonderfully evocative illustrations. Sunny uses her teeth to save the day and surprises everyone by bidding at an auction.

Count Olaf once again manages to fool the adults with a simple disguise involving a monocle, high boots and improper English. This instalment sees the Baudelaires climbing a lot of stairs (and occasionally sliding down bannisters), forced to wear ill-fitting pinstripe suits, drinking aqua martinis and parsley sodas, eating at Café Salmonella, climbing up and down a lift shaft, being thrown down a lift shaft, and improvising ropes and welding equipment, all the while worrying about their kidnapped friends, the Quagmire triplets. Snicket’s word and phrase definitions are often hilarious.

Snicket’s tone throughout is apologetic, sincere and matter-of-fact as he relates the unfortunate events in the children’s lives his imaginative and even surreptitiously educational style will hold much appeal for younger readers. Luckily these well-mannered and uncomplaining children are also very resourceful: Violet invents, Klaus researches and Sunny bites. Having already suffered the loss of their parents, the threat of marriage, slave labour, hypnosis, a terrible boarding school, and the murder of their Uncle Monty and Aunt Josephine at the hands of the evil Count Olaf and his nefarious assistants, the siblings are ever-vigilant of his reappearance. Esme is a rather forceful woman who is a dedicated follower of fashion, while Jerome never likes to argue, with anyone.

As we once again join the unlucky Baudelaire orphans, they are deposited by their banker, the constantly coughing Mr Poe, at 667 Dark Avenue, into the hands of their new guardians, Jerome and Esme Squalor. The Ersatz Elevator is the sixth book in A Series of Unfortunate Events by American author, Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler).

The ersatz elevator book