In praise of Violet Baudelaire

This post is part of Playing By The Book's I'm looking for a book about... carnival. This month the theme is Inventors and Inventions.

 

Image: fanpop.com

Violet Baudelaire, the oldest of the Baudelaire siblings, is 14 in the first of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. She is the greatest inventor of her age, having won her first inventing competition at 5, having invented an automatic rolling pin. Throughout the series, whenever threatened with their evil guardian, Count Olaf, Violet ties her hair back to keep it out of her eyes and uses her skill as an inventor to rescue them. She ingeniously uses materials to hand to create her contraptions: for example, in  The Bad Beginning she uses picture wires and torn clothing to create a grappling hook to climb a tower and rescue baby Sunny.

If you haven't read A Series of Unfortunate Events, then you have a treat ahead. They are incredibly funny, with a deadpan style with very formal language, and sardonic authorial comment. I think it would be great fun to read them with children and create inventions with household objects.