13 Words by Lemony Snicket and Maira Kalman

The book was published on October 15th 2010 by HarperCollins Children’s Book Group.

Altogether, there are 37 pages in the book.

Overall, the plot was based around the following 13 words; bird, despondent, cake, dog, busy, convertible, goat, hat, haberdashery, scarlet, baby, panache, Mezzo Soprano.
The book began with a bird on a table, a bird that was despondent. Whilst going to look for something to cheer itself up, it came across a cake under the table and upon opening it, discovered that it was strawberry shortcake and then went on to share it with the dog. Once the cake was all eaten, the bird then went back to being busy painting eleven ladders in ten colours. Outside, was a green convertible driven by a goat that was waiting to take the dog into town. Knowing the bird was sad and the cake hadn't cheered the bird up, the dog decided to take matters into his own hands by aiming to go and find something to cheer her up. The goat suggested buying the bird a hat which turned out to be a great idea so they then went to go someplace to buy one. Arriving outside the haberdashery, the door was painted scarlet and the owner was a baby! In the end, the hat with the most panache was purchased and the bird was really very happy, so happy that the Mezzo-Soprano decided to sing about it all.

The setting of the story varied from it being set in a house, to a conversation held between the dog and goat whilst they were on their way to buy the bird a hat from the haberdashery where yet another conversation between more/different characters also took place.

The characters in the story were:

• A Bird that went from being despondent, to busy and then to finally being happy.
• A Dog that just wanted to do as much as he could to make the bird happy.
• A Goat that was the driver of a green convertible and also came up with the idea of buying the bird a hat.
• A Baby that was the owner of the haberdashery and helped the dog understand the meaning of the word panache.
• A Mezzo-Soprano who in the end sang a song about the events that took place.

In all honesty, the book really isn't the sort of book I would choose to read therefore I didn't really have a favourite part although I always tend to give a chance to anything that catches my eye as this did because of one of  its authors, Lemony Snicket who's 'Series of Unfortunate Events', I absolutely loved.

Despite the fact that I didn't exactly enjoy the book, I didn't hate it and I don't believe that there were any weak parts to the story either. What I found good was the fact that even though it seems to be a book aimed at children, and having it include words such as 'haberdashery', 'despondent', 'panache', and ’Mezzo Soprano', the authors clearly thought about their readers due to the fact that all words were somehow explained so they could then be a understood and their young readers were not left dumbfounded.
Overall, this book wasn’t one that I would find hard to put down.