The Reptile Room (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Second)
by Lemony Snicket
This is the second of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. The Baudelaire orphans are shipped off to live with their “Uncle Monty”. Montgomery Montgomery (not a typo) is a herpetologist living in the country with a large reptile room where the orphans can read and study and invent all they want — in fact, they need to in order to help Uncle Monty prepare for their trip to Peru to study new species of snakes.
Of course, this is the Baudelaire orphans we’re talking about, so the happiness can’t last.