My kids have been reading "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snickett. I read a couple as well, and we saw the movie.

I am impressed! The writer explains the definitions of some words in the text of the stories. I think this is brilliant - kids get so many words thrown at them, and most of them don't know how to use a dictionary (victims of the "figure it out from context" craziness...) and so this is a very unusual approach.

The stories kind of go on and on, and I don't know if I'll read them all myself, but my kids definitely enjoy them!