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The Slippery Slope Summary

SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. This one-page guide includes a plot summary and brief analysis of The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket.

The Slippery Slope (2003) by Lemony Snicket is the tenth novel in a series of children’s books titled A Series of Unfortunate Events. The book follows three siblings, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, who, having lost their parents to a horrible fire, find themselves targeted by the villain Count Olaf, who seeks to steal their fortune. In The Slippery Slope, Violet and Klaus travel to the Mortmain Mountains to rescue their baby sister, Sunny, from the evil Count Olaf and his troupe of accomplices. The book was illustrated by Brett Helquist.

The Slippery Slope picks up where the previous installment, The Carnivorous Carnival, left off, with the two older Baudelaire children hurtling down a steep mountain in a runaway caravan. Sunny, the youngest Baudelaire has been captured by Count Olaf, his accomplice Esme Squalor, and the other members of their nefarious troupe of villains. Olaf is taking Sunny to the peak of Mount Fraught; while they travel, Sunny is forced to do the troupe’s chores.

To escape the careening caravan, Violet uses her inventing skills to construct a shoot that allows them to safely depart the caravan before it falls off the edge of a steep cliff. She and Klaus escape, but the caravan falls down the cliff, leaving them with few clothes. They travel up the mountain to rescue Sunny, eventually finding a group of snow scouts, including Bruce, a man who helped their deceased Uncle Monty with his reptiles in the third book in the series; Carmelita Spats, a dreaded character from The Austere Academy Coreldraw 2020 download crackeado. ; and one masked Snow Scout who won’t reveal his identity.

The children spend time with the masked Snow Scout, who wakes them in the middle of the night and brings them up a chimney into the ruined headquarters of the VFD, a secret organization the Baudelaires’ believe must hold the clue to the whereabouts of their missing parents. In the VFD headquarters, the masked Snow Scout reveals that he is Quigley Quagmire, the lost sibling of two friends of the Baudelaire children, whom they thought had died in the fire that killed the Quagmire parents. Quigley, like the Baudelaires, is trying to reunite with his family.

Meanwhile, Sunny has been spying on Count Olaf while she is doing chores for the troupe. She learns that Count Olaf possesses something called the Snicket File, which Sunny believes contains information about the whereabouts of their parents. While doing chores, Sunny finds a device that makes green smoke, which she uses to send up a flare, hoping Klaus and Violet will see it.

Seeing the flare, Klaus, Violet, and Quigley construct a makeshift toboggan to climb to the top of Mount Fraught to rescue Sunny. They find Sunny, but she insists on remaining in the camp, because she believes she can spy on Olaf and get the information for which they have been searching. Violet reluctantly agrees to her plan, returning to the ruins of the VFD headquarters to make a new plan with Quigley and Klaus.

Finally, Klaus and Sunny arrange to trap Esme and ransom her for Sunny’s return. At the last minute, however, they feel guilty about the plot and warn Esme not to fall into the trap. Olaf demands members of his troupe throw Sunny off a cliff, but, ultimately, they refuse and leave the troupe. Olaf tries to find Sunny but discovers she has been swept away by the Baudelaires who, along with Quigley, travel in a sled back down the mountain.

At the end of the book, Quigley and the Baudelaires are separated once more when they take their sled down a frozen waterfall, which shatters as they travel down it, splitting the group in two. Gears of war cosplay.

The Slippery Slope is the tenth book in the Series of Unfortunate Events, which begins with The Bad Beginning, and ends with the thirteenth book, The End. Playful and full of clues, the series has a snarky narrator who appears also in The Unauthorized Autobiography, a supplementary book to the series. Lemony Snicket is the author of a second series, All the Wrong Questions. The story of the Baudelaire children has appeared in one feature-length film and a Netflix mini-series, which was released in 2017. Lemony Snicket is the pen name of Daniel Handler, who writes books for children and adults. He is a best-selling author and the editor of a small press in San Francisco.

The Slippery Slope is the tenth novel in the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. It was illustrated by Brett Helquist and released on September 23, 2003. In the novel, Violet and Klaus Baudelaire make their way up the Mortmain Mountains to rescue their sister Sunny from Count Olaf and his troupe. They meet Quigley Quagmire, a character who they thought to be dead, and visit the headquarters of a mysterious organization called 'V.F.D.' They are reunited with Sunny and manage to escape from Olaf. The book has received positive reviews and been translated into several different languages.

Plot[edit]

Continuing on from The Carnivorous Carnival, Violet and Klaus are in a caravan rolling down the Mortmain Mountains. Sunny is trapped in a car with Count Olaf, Esmé, and the theater troupe, which now includes the carnival's henchpeople. From materials in the caravan, Violet frantically constructs a drag chute and instructs Klaus to mix together sticky foodstuffs, which he pours on the tires. The caravan comes to a halt at the very edge of the cliff, and tumbles off when Violet and Klaus step out, leaving them with only a few clothes. They travel up the mountain and are attacked by Snow Gnats, so they take cover in a cave. Snow Scouts, led by Bruce (the man who collected Uncle Monty's reptiles from The Reptile Room), are occupying the cave, and Carmelita Spats (a student from The Austere Academy) is to be crowned Snow Queen. A masked Snow Scout communicates with the Baudelaires with 'V.F.D.' phrases such as 'very foul day'. At night, the scout wakes Violet and Klaus and leads them up a chimney. He calls it a 'Vertical Flame Diversion' and at the end they reach a 'Vernacularly Fastened Door', which allows the trio through once they solve three literary questions.

Meanwhile, Olaf and his troupe have reached the summit of Mount Fraught, and Sunny is forced to do their chores. She sleeps in a casserole dish in the car trunk. The next morning, she prepares breakfast for the troupe, but Olaf is furious at the cold meal. Two villains arrive, described as 'the woman with hair but no beard' and 'the man with a beard but no hair'. Their aura frightens even Olaf, and they announce that they have burned down the nearby V.F.D. headquarters. They give Olaf the Snicket File, without the last page, and give Esmé a green object called a Verdant Flammable Device. Sunny uses the device to create smoke, which she hopes her siblings will see.

Violet, Klaus, and the masked Snow Scout are now in the ruins of the V.F.D. headquarters. The Snow Scout is Quigley, the Quagmire triplet whose siblings thought he perished in the fire that killed their parents. He explains that during the fire his mother hid him in an underground passage, which led to Uncle Monty's house. He learned about V.F.D. from Jacques Snicket shortly after the Baudelaires departed from Monty's house and traveled to find his siblings. Violet, Klaus, and Quigley then see green smoke from the mountain above them, and Violet constructs a device from a ukelele and forks, which can be used to climb the frozen stream. She travels up with Quigley and they reach Sunny, who wants to spy on Olaf. Violet reluctantly agrees, and climbs back down with Quigley.

In the V.F.D. library, Klaus has found a page from a code book explaining 'Verbal Fridge Dialogue', and from the contents of a fridge in the headquarters, he learns that there is a meeting in the 'last safe place' on Thursday. When Violet and Quigley arrive, the three plot to trap Esmé in order to exchange her for Sunny. They dig a pit overnight and lure Esmé down with a Verdant Flammable Device of Quigley's, but after becoming uncomfortable with the idea of kidnapping, they tell Esmé to avoid the pit. Wearing masks, they climb back up the stream with the toboggan that Esmé rode down on.

Klaus pretends to be a volunteer who will trade the location of the sugar bowl for Sunny. As Olaf and Esmé argue, the Snow Scout troupe arrive and Carmelita is crowned False Spring Queen. Olaf and Esmé invite her to join the troupe. Though the children warn them, the Snow Scouts are ensnared in a net by eagles that fly away with them. Olaf orders Sunny to be thrown off the mountain, but the White-Faced Women refuse and quit the troupe. Olaf tries to throw Sunny off the mountain, but she is hiding behind the car, not sleeping in the casserole dish. The three Baudelaires and Quigley escape down the stream with the toboggan, but the ice has now cracked enough to shatter the waterfall and separate Quigley from the Baudelaires.

Reception[edit]

Stephanie Zvirin of Booklist gave The Slippery Slope a positive review, complimenting the 'joyful wordplay and the quirky imaginative touches', describing the characters as 'true to form, ridiculous and fun' and noting that Snicket's 'wry telling is pitch-perfect'. In the Netflix adaptation during the scene where the Baudelaires escape, Lemony Snicket tells the viewers to refer this to the Itsy Bitsy Spider song, knowing they learned it in their childhood. ^[1] David Abrams of January Magazine gave the book a positive review, saying 'the delight in The Slippery Slope and others in this series is found in the way the author jauntily jots his jokes across the page.'^[2] Norah Piehl from Kidsreads wrote that the book 'has all of the tongue-in-cheek wit that makes the series enjoyable for kids and adults alike', and that 'Snicket really outdoes himself'.^[3]

Translations[edit]

• Spanish Castillian: 'La Pendiente Resbaladiza' (The Slippery Slope)
• Brazilian Portuguese: 'O Escorregador de Gelo' (The Slide of Ice), Cia. das Letras, 2004, ISBN85-359-0575-8
• Finnish: 'Luikurin liuku' (The Fraudster's Slide), WSOY, 2003, ISBN951-0-30679-7
• Italian: 'La scivolosa scarpata' (The Slippery Slope), Salani, 2006, ISBN978-88-8451-635-0
• Greek: 'Η Ολισθηρή Οροσειρά' (The Sliding Mountain Range)
• Japanese: 'つるつるスロープ' (The Slippery Slope), Soshisha, 2006, ISBN978-4-7942-1480-5
• Norwegian: 'Den frosne fossen' (The Frozen Waterfall), Tor Edvin Dahl, Cappelen Damm, 2004, ISBN9788202234294
• Russian: 'Скользкий склон' (The Slippery Slope), Azbuka, 2005, ISBN5-352-01599-8
• French: 'La Pente Glissante' (The Slippery Slope)
• Polish: 'Zjezdne zbocze' (The Slippery Slope)

Adaptation[edit]

The book was adapted into the first and second episodes of the third season of the television series adaptation produced by Netflix.^[4]

References[edit]

1. ^Zvirin, Stephanie (January 1, 2004). 'Slippery Slope, by Lemony Snicket'. Booklist. Retrieved July 15, 2015.
2. ^Abrams, David (November 2003). 'Unfortunately, It's Excellent'. January Magazine. Retrieved July 15, 2015.
3. ^Piehl, Norah (September 23, 2003). 'The Slippery Slope'. Kidsreads. Retrieved July 15, 2015.
4. ^Snetiker, Marc (January 11, 2017). 'Lemony Snicket speaks out about Netflix's Series of Unfortunate Events'. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved January 12, 2017.

See also[edit]