The Read-Aloud That Doesn't Put Dad to Sleep: A Series of Unfortunate Events

August 29, 2026

Here’s a confession I don’t love making. Most nights, I’m the one who falls asleep during the bedtime story. Cole and Luke are wide awake, elbowing me, going “Dad. Dad. You skipped a page.” And I did skip a page, because somewhere around the third gentle bunny learning about friendship, my brain clocked out.

So I went looking for a kids’ book that keeps me up too. I found one. It’s a little dark, a little mean, and my boys ask for it by name.

It’s called A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the first one is The Bad Beginning.

Let me tell you the setup, because the setup is the whole pitch. Three kids — the Baudelaires — lose their parents in a fire. That’s page one. From there they get handed off to a distant relative named Count Olaf, a washed-up actor who is very obviously only after the fortune the kids will inherit. He’s terrible. He makes them do chores, feeds them badly, and cooks up a scheme to steal everything. And the narrator, a fellow named Lemony Snicket, spends the entire book warning you to stop reading.

That’s the joke. That’s the engine of the whole thing.

Snicket opens by telling you, more or less, that this is a miserable story with an unhappy ending, and you’d be much better off putting the book down and reading about a happy little elf instead. He does this over and over. And here’s what happens at my house: the second the narrator tells the boys to stop reading, they lean in harder. Luke, who’s seven, thinks getting told not to do something is basically a dare. Works every time.

The gloom is played so straight that it flips over into funny. Nobody in the book seems to notice how bad things are, which is exactly why you laugh. Cole’s nine, and dry humor is just starting to click for him — the kind where you say the opposite of what you mean and let the kid figure it out. This book runs on that. He catches it now, grins, and then explains the joke to his brother like he invented comedy.

There’s a bit I love where Snicket stops the story to teach you a word. He’ll drop something like “a word which here means…” and then give you the meaning right in the sentence. My favorite accidental win: the boys are picking up real vocabulary and they have no idea it’s happening. Don’t tell them. It’ll ruin it.

The three kids are easy to root for, too, and they’re not interchangeable. Violet is the oldest, an inventor — she ties her hair up when she’s thinking and builds a way out of trouble. Klaus reads everything and remembers it, which is the closest thing to a superpower a bookish kid can have. And Sunny is a baby who mostly bites things, and her bites are somehow always the right call. Each of my boys picked a favorite by the end of the first chapter. That’s a good sign in a read-aloud — everybody’s got a horse in the race.

Now, honest notes, because that’s the deal here.

This isn’t a warm, cozy book, and it’s not trying to be. Parents die in chapter one, the adults are useless or cruel, and it never once pretends everything’s fine. If you’ve got a kid who takes sad stuff to heart at bedtime, read the first chapter yourself first and see. Mine handle it because the whole thing is so over-the-top that it reads like a cartoon, not real life. You know your kid. Trust that.

And the commitment question, because it’s a real one: there are thirteen of these. Thirteen. I’m not telling you to sign up for all of them tonight. Read The Bad Beginning. It stands on its own — a beginning, a middle, and an ending, wrapped up in one small book. If your house loves it, the road’s there. If it’s not your thing, you’ve lost a couple of short evenings and learned a few good words.

We’re on book four now. Some nights the boys let me read two chapters if I do the Count Olaf voice, which is a rough, growly thing I’m weirdly proud of. My wife Dee says it’s the most animated she’s ever seen me at 8pm on a work night. She’s not wrong. A guy who frames houses all day doesn’t have a lot left in the tank by bedtime. This book gives some back.

So here’s my verdict, kid-book edition. Start A Series of Unfortunate Events if you want a bedtime read where the parent laughs too, and you’re okay with a story that’s spooky-funny instead of soft. Skip it if you need everything to end in a hug.

Just don’t blame me when a seven-year-old starts using the word “lachrymose” at the dinner table. That one’s on Snicket.