It was hard for me to get into this book, because the writing style reminds me of A Series of Unfortunate Events. It tends toward the silly; fortunately, events are nowhere near as dire as the ones in Daniel Handler's books. The protagonists are children who attend a special school which is supposed to help them overcome phobias. Their nemesis is a newspaper reporter, who is apparently a talking pig, and who is preparing an expose of the school and of the students' innermost secrets. Despite the general inanity, by the middle of the book I got kind of attached to one of the characters--at least enough to finish reading it. There are a few mildly off-color remarks for those worldly enough to catch them.