Antipathy Academy: read an excerpt from the fifth volume of A Series of Unfortunate Events
At the end of the month, HarperCollins Polska announced the premiere of two new volumes of the youth series entitled A Series of Unfortunate Events. These will be Academy of antipathy and Elevator ghost – the fifth and sixth installment of the series Lemony Snicket.
A Series of Unfortunate Events is one of the most recognizable series for young people – also thanks to the series screening, which can be watched on Netflix. The cycle about the world’s most unlucky siblings has thirteen volumes. A Series of Unfortunate Events has been translated into 41 languages and has sold a dizzying number of over 65 million copies worldwide.
Antipathy Academy will be released by Harper Collins Poland on May 31. We invite you to read an excerpt from the novel Antipathy Academy translated by Jolanta Kozak.
The Academy of Antipathy – book description
Violet, Klaus and Sunny are cute and intelligent siblings, but their lives have been a real disaster for some time now. Do you think the orphans will finally find a peaceful haven? After a dramatic stay at the Sawmill, where they had to work hard, Klaus, Violet and Sunny Baudelaire end up at Prufrock Elementary School. It might seem that a renowned boarding facility is a place created for brilliant and knowledge-absorbing children. Unfortunately, the luxury dormitory turns out to be a tin shack, the headmaster is an extremely vicious individual, and the teachers are terrible. And when the wicked Count Olaf falls on the trail of the siblings, the situation becomes simply hopeless … Lemony Snicket’s books have something that captures the heart and makes “A Series of Unfortunate Events” win millions of admirers around the world, and has also been filmed .
The Academy of Antipathy – excerpt from the novel
CHAPTER ONE
If you were to award a gold medal to the least likeable person in the world, you would have to award it to Karmelite Plujko, and even if not, Karmelite Plujko is one of those people who would snatch the medal from your hands anyway. Carmelite Plujko was uncultured, uncouth and slovenly. Indeed, I am sorry to have to describe her to you, for even without mentioning such an odious character, our history is full of unpleasant and terrifying descriptions.
Fortunately, the Baudelaire orphans, not Carmelite Spitter, are the heroes of this story, and if you were to award a gold medal to Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, they would deserve a gold medal for surviving against the odds. Adversity is, in other words, trouble. Few people in this world have known a fate as perplexing as the one that haunts our young heroes wherever they go. The Baudelaires’ troubles began the day they were playing on the beach when they received word that their parents had died in a terrible fire and that they were to live with a distant relative named Count Olaf.
If you were to award a gold medal to Count Olaf for anything, you would have to lock him (the medal, not Olaf) very well until the ceremony began, for Count Olaf is such a greedy and mean person that he would have tried to steal the award beforehand. The Baudelaire orphans did not have a gold medal, but they had a great inheritance from their parents – and it was this inheritance that Count Olaf was constantly betting on. The three Baudelaires barely-barely survived their stay at Count Olaf’s house, and ever since they got out Olaf had been tracking them everywhere, usually with one or more dangerous and disgusting accomplices. No matter who took care of the Baudelaires at the time, Count Olaf became the guardian’s shadow and did mean things that I can’t even enumerate here. Just to mention: kidnapping, murder, threatening phone calls, disguises, poisoning, hypnotizing, and preparing disgusting meals – just some of the harassment that the Baudelaire orphans had to endure on his part. Worse still, Count Olaf had a nasty habit of eluding justice, so it was always certain he would reappear. I’m very sorry that this is happening, but I can’t help it – that’s the way it is.
I warn you that this is the story, because in a moment you will meet the uncultured, uncouth and sloppy Carmelite Spitter, so if reading about this character fills you with repulsion, then it’s best to put this book down right now and read something else, because from now on it will only be worse and worse. Soon, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire will encounter such terrible adversity that being pushed out of the way by Carmelite Spitter will seem no worse than eating a scoop of ice cream.
“Get out of my way, you bastard!” snarled the uncultured, uncouth, slovenly girl and ran on, shoving aside the Baudelaire orphans.
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were so stunned that they didn’t say a word. They stood frozen on the brick pavement, which must have been very old, because thick, dark moss grew out of the cracks between the bricks. On either side of the sidewalk was a huge, rusty lawn that looked as if it had never been watered, and hundreds of children were running in all directions on the lawn. Every now and then one fell, but immediately jumped to its feet and ran on. It looked tiresome and pointless – both to be avoided at all costs – but the Baudelaire orphans barely looked at the running children, for they stared intently at the mossy bricks under their feet.
Shyness is a strange thing because, like quicksand, it can surprise you out of nowhere and (like quicksand) it usually makes its victims look down. It was going to be the Baudelaires’ first day at Prufrock Elementary School, and the three of them decided they’d rather look at the moss between the bricks than anything else.
“Did you drop something?” asked Mr. Poe, coughing into a white handkerchief.
One of the objects the Baudelaires had no desire to look at right now was Mr. Poe, tottering right behind them. Mr. Poe was a banker who had been put in charge of the Baudelaires’ affairs after a terrible fire – very wrongly, as it soon turned out. Mr. Poe was well-meaning, but even a mustard jar, which is probably also well-meaning, would have done a better job of looking after the children. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny have learned long ago that the only thing they can count on from Mr. Poe is his constant coughing.
“No,” replied Violet. “We didn’t drop anything.
Violet was the oldest of the three Baudelaires and was not generally shy. She liked to construct inventions, and therefore she could often be found thinking about the latest construction. She tied her hair with a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. After making an invention, Violet liked to show it off to her friends, who were usually impressed by her talent. Right now, looking at the moss-covered bricks of the sidewalk, she wondered if she could build a machine to keep the sidewalks free of moss, but she was too nervous to talk about it. She was worried about what would happen if none of the teachers, students, or school management took an interest in her inventions.
