Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library -- Chris Grabenstein
Twelve-year-old Kyle Keeley is the youngest of three boys. His brother Mike is a gifted athlete, his brother Curtis is a super-genius, but Kyle... well, Kyle isn't especially good at any one thing. He loves games, though—actually, the whole Keeley clan is comfortably wholesome and THEY ALL LOOOOOVE games, and I kind of wish they lived next door to me so we could have a weekly neighborhood game night—because they are the one thing that he can occasionally actually beat his brothers at.
So, when he finds out that his favorite gamemaker, Luigi L. Lemoncello, has designed his town's new public library AND that the winners of an essay contest will get to participate in a pre-opening lock-in, WELL. Of COURSE he's going to enter.
Small problem: the contest ends, like, twenty minutes after he finds out about it.
I'd like to see a list of all of the books that get name-dropped in Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library. Because holy cow, there were a lot of them: not just as window-dressing of the library, or even as reading choices (one of the characters is rarely without her nose in a book), and not only as a part of the larger puzzle-game, but also just in regular conversation: Mr. Lemoncello incorporates them into almost every line of his dialogue, as in, "The Dewey decimal doors are now open and, unlike Tuck, this game will not be everlasting."
Which is a whole lot of fun.
The major characters mostly end the book on the same notes that they begin on: though he definitely discovers a talent for leadership (and a desire to start reading more) along the way, Kyle is the same generous everyman from beginning to end while Charles is consistently a horribly snooty, selfish, and sneaky suck-up. Considering the parallels to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—the contest, the brilliant and eccentric inventor, the Be Decent And You Will Ultimately Be Rewarded storyline—though, that is fitting and it works. And I loved that some of the secondary characters—like Sierra the bookworm who begins to come out of her grief-induced shell and Haley the seeming bubble-headed cheerleader who turns out to be much brighter and much more likable than she first appears—do display some growth, and in both cases, it's subtle and organic.
But that's not really what most readers will be looking for here! They'll be looking for a fun adventure full of puzzles and games and smart jokes and lots and lots of literary allusions, a likable group of kids to root for, a villain to hiss at, and an opportunity to solve the puzzles for themselves, and they'll get all of that—and more—in spades.
Fun stuff, bound to appeal to fans of Winston Breen.
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Author page.
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Book source: Review copy from the publicist.