Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Actually,” said Nicole, “we all beat him.”

  Marjory blew her teammate a wet raspberry. “Yeah. Right. Like you guys would’ve had a chance without me.”

  “Marjory?” said Ms. Miles. “Remember, there is no ‘I’ in ‘team.’ ”

  So? thought Marjory. Because there is definitely an “m” and an “e” for me!

  —

  To chill out after such a lousy day, Marjory headed into the motel lobby and started reorganizing the rack of tourist brochures.

  All the other Library Olympians, including Marjory’s worthless teammates, were at the pizza place next door to the motel, having dinner and probably playing more mind-numbing video games.

  Andrew Peckleman, the boy with the Olympic-sized goggle glasses who worked at the motel, came into the lobby when she was about halfway done.

  “Are you going with an alphabetical classification system or something a bit more complex?”

  “I’m categorizing them according to attraction type,” said Marjory. “Outdoor activities, historical sites, shopping opportunities—subcategorized, of course, into fashion, antiques, and souvenirs.”

  “Of course,” said Andrew.

  “And, over here, you’ll find dining options.”

  Andrew smiled. “Isn’t informational organization awesome?”

  “Yes,” said Marjory. “It’s certainly more intellectually stimulating than video games.”

  “Rough day at the Library Olympics?”

  “Ha! That Lemoncello Library is as ridiculous and absurd as Mr. Lemoncello himself.”

  “True,” said Andrew through his nose. “I’m afraid Mr. Lemoncello doesn’t like libraries qua libraries.”

  Marjory nearly gasped. “You use the word ‘qua’?”

  “Yes,” said Andrew, finger-sliding his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “But only when its usage is appropriate.”

  A lady wearing a fur-fringed jacket floated into the lobby.

  “Hello, Andrew.”

  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Chiltington. What’re you doing here?”

  “I came to see Miss Muldauer.”

  “Who are you?” asked Marjory. “And why do you have a dead animal wrapped around your neck?”

  “There’s a slight nip in the air, dear. Andrew, would you kindly excuse us? I need to talk to Miss Muldauer in private.”

  “But…”

  “Andrew?” his uncle Woody called from outside the front doors. “We need to go grease the baffles on the bird feeders.”

  “Right now?”

  “The sooner, the better. I noticed a squirrel having an upside-down feast on feeder number eight. We need to put an end to that. A slicker surface might do the trick.”

  “But…”

  “Say goodbye to Marjory, Andrew,” suggested Mrs. Chiltington.

  “Okay. See you later, Marjory. I have to go to work.”

  Mrs. Chiltington waited for him and his uncle to walk down the driveway.

  Then she pounced.

  “Miss Muldauer, may I be frank with you?”

  Marjory shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  “I came here this evening as a representative of the League of Concerned Library Lovers.”

  “Who are they?”

  “A group of local citizens who love libraries and consider Mr. Luigi L. Lemoncello to be a threat to all that we hold dear.”

  “The man is a major-league wackaloon,” said Marjory.

  “That he is.” Mrs. Chiltington glanced around to make absolutely certain they were alone in the lobby. “I was wondering if you might be able to help Mr. Peckleman and I with a small…project?”

  “I’m kind of busy trying to win these games.”

  “This won’t take much of your time. I promise. But if we work together, I feel confident, we will both be quite satisfied with the end result.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With your assistance, Marjory, I firmly believe we will convince Mr. Lemoncello to abandon his infantile and dangerously contagious ideas about how a library should be run. Certain things don’t belong in our temples of knowledge. Things like flying dinosaur video games.”

  “So why do you need me?”

  “Because the books in the Lemoncello Library are currently off-limits to everyone except you thirty-two Olympians.”

  “What?” said Marjory, arching an eyebrow. “You want me to check out a book?”

  “That’s right, Marjory. A book. Just one.”

  “We can’t. Not during the games.”

  “You strike me as a clever young lady. Surely you can find a way to skirt the rules?”

  “But what about my scholarship?”

  “Do this for me, and you won’t need Mr. Lemoncello’s money. Mr. Peckleman and I will personally guarantee funding for your college education. Call it a ‘Go to College Free’ card. My family is extremely wealthy, Marjory. Has been for centuries.”

  Interesting. By removing one book from the stacks, Marjory could help these locals put an end to Mr. Lemoncello’s misguided notions about how a library should be run and, at the same time, earn herself a full-ride college scholarship.

  “So, what makes this one book so special?”

  “It is, as they say, the straw that will break the camel’s back. Once it leaves the Alexandriaville Public Library, we feel quite confident that Mr. Luigi Lemoncello will want to leave, too.”

  Kyle wasn’t worried when Dr. Zinchenko made her morning announcements at Olympia Village on day three of the games.

  “Today’s two competitions will both be centered on books.”

  Kyle knew Sierra Russell could handle anything bookish the game makers threw at her.

  “Today’s your day to shine,” he told her.

  “I’ll do my best,” said Sierra.

  When the bookmobiles arrived at the Lemoncello Library, the security guards, Clarence and Clement, gave each team member a brand-new smartphone.

  “You will need it for today’s first game,” said Clarence.

  “But you get to keep it, too,” added Clement.

  Sweet, thought Kyle. Even if his team lost this round, they’d all just scored some excellent swag.

  The eight teams were assigned work desks in the rotunda. Spectators crowded around the edge of the circular room.

  “Please access the Web browser on your phones,” said Dr. Zinchenko from her position behind the central desk, “and go to Lemoncello.it.”

  Kyle did. Then he helped Sierra do it, too. Miguel and Akimi were fine on their own.

  “Please enter game code one-zero-zero-two-four.”

  All the players did.

  “Excellent,” said Dr. Zinchenko.

  Overhead, the Wonder Dome turned into a giant game screen reading “Welcome to the Battle of the Books.”

  “Please enter your first and last names and, when you have done so, tap ‘Join Game.’ When you are all online, I, as the quizmaster, will show you a series of ten questions, each one with four possible answers. For each question, you will have ten seconds to make your selection on your phone screen. Lemoncello.it will instantaneously calculate your score based on correctness and speed of answering. It will then post a leaderboard for the top five players. In the event of a tie, the team with the most players in the top five will be awarded today’s first medal, the Libris.”

  Up on the Wonder Dome, thirty-two brightly colored names in a balloon font popped into view as the players finished tapping them into their phones.

  “Let us begin,” said Dr. Zinchenko. “First question: In which book does a character bounce a pinecone off someone’s head?”

  Tense, clock-ticking music throbbed out of the Rotunda Reading Room’s hidden speakers.

  Four answers were displayed on the dome, each identified with a geometric shape. A square for Ungifted by Gordon Korman, a triangle for A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff, a hexagon for Twerp by Mark Goldblatt, and an oval for The Postcard by Tony Abbott.

  “The squa
re,” whispered Sierra.

  Kyle, Akimi, and Miguel didn’t waste any time second-guessing her answer, because the countdown clock had already slid from ten seconds to five by the time they’d finished reading all the possible answers.

  A gong sounded when the timer hit zero. The red square for Ungifted lit up and was given a check mark as the correct answer. According to the scoreboard on the ceiling, thirty of the thirty-two players had answered correctly, including, of course, all four players from Ohio.

  “Way to go, Sierra!” said Kyle.

  “Question two,” said Dr. Zinchenko. “The Watson family went to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. In what city did the Watson family actually live?“

  Four choices filled all the phone screens: Detroit, Kansas City, Kalamazoo, and Flint.

  “Flint,” said Sierra.

  All the players on the hometown team tapped the oval icon for Flint.

  Sierra’s answer, once again, was correct.

  “Boo-yah,” said Kyle.

  Suddenly, Marjory Muldauer, two desks away, leapt up from her seat.

  “Dr. Zinchenko?”

  “Yes, Ms. Muldauer?”

  She pointed at Sierra. “That girl from Ohio is telling her teammates what answer to give.”

  Trembling slightly, Sierra stood up, too. “Is that against the rules, Dr. Zinchenko?”

  Kyle stood up beside her. “Because you didn’t say we couldn’t help each other.”

  “Yeah,” said Miguel, standing up, too.

  “What they said,” added Akimi as she stood to join her teammates.

  “You are correct,” said Dr. Zinchenko. “I did not specifically state that collaboration would be prohibited.”

  “But it’s cheating!” hollered Marjory. She whirled around and glared at Kyle. “This isn’t flap-your-arms-and-do-the-chicken-dance, Kyle Keeley. This is serious. ‘Battle of the Books’ serious. Everybody on your team needs to know the material, inside and out.”

  “I agree with Miss Muldauer,” boomed Mr. Lemoncello. His huge face, looking weirdly warped around the edges, was now filling all the video screens under the dome. “As much as I love teamwork, for this game, you all need to fly solo, like Han in Star Wars, although he always had Chewbacca in the copilot seat. But that is neither here nor there, because it is in a galaxy far, far away. Play on, Olympians. And henceforth, there shall be no consultation amongst teammates. Kindly keep your eyes on your own phone.”

  The Battle of the Books continued.

  Kyle got a couple of answers right on his own, but he took longer to respond than everybody else, so his name never appeared on the leaderboard again. After the ninth question was answered, Marjory Muldauer, Sierra Russell, and a girl from Knoxville, Tennessee, named Jennifer Greene were all tied for first place.

  “Here is your final question,” said Dr. Zinchenko. “Once again, you will have ten seconds to choose your answer. In which book is a toddler worshipped by cockroaches?”

  Wow! Kyle actually knew that one, because the past summer he’d read the book. He quickly tapped the purple hexagon for Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins, who had also written The Hunger Games.

  The gong sounded.

  Kyle’s answer was correct.

  Sierra’s, however, wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I read that book when I was six. I forgot….”

  “It’s okay,” said Kyle.

  Meanwhile, at the Midwest team’s table, people were jumping up and doing bad potato-masher dances.

  Jennifer Greene from the Southeastern team must’ve chosen the wrong answer, too. Because according to the leaderboard, Marjory Muldauer had just won the games’ fifth medal.

  “We’re still tied for first place,” Kyle reminded Sierra.

  Sierra lowered her eyes. “But I let you guys down.”

  “Not really,” said Akimi. “Did you see any of us winning that last game? I thought the cockroach book was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, because they eat Cockroach Clusters at Honeydukes.”

  “We’ll win the next medal,” said Miguel. “You’ll see.”

  “Moving on to game six,” said Dr. Zinchenko, still stationed behind the circular librarian’s desk at the center of the room. “Please focus your eyes on the area between the lobby archway and the entrance to the Children’s Room.”

  Clarence and Clement came into the rotunda to clear a path. Spectators gladly moved out of their way. The musclemen were both pretty ginormous.

  “Players?” said Dr. Zinchenko. “This will be another solo competition. Please pick one player to represent your team. A parade of costumed characters as well as stagehands carrying props will soon march from the lobby, promenade along the back wall, and exit into the Children’s Room. Your chosen player will assemble the characters and props into titles of famous children’s books. The player who can correctly figure out the titles and identify their authors the fastest will win our sixth medal, the ‘I Did It!’ ”

  “I played a mix-and-match game like this once in a magazine,” said Miguel.

  “Good,” said Sierra. “You should be our player for this round.”

  “No way. You fall off a horse, what do you do?”

  “Bruise your butt?” said Akimi.

  “No,” said Kyle with a laugh. “You climb right back into the saddle.”

  Miguel agreed. “This is your saddle, Sierra.”

  “I don’t want to lose another game….”

  “You won’t,” said Kyle. “You’re our number one bookworm. In a good way.”

  “Not in the icky insect-that-bores-through-paper way,” added Akimi.

  “Thanks,” said Sierra. “I think.”

  “Let the title parade begin!” commanded Dr. Zin-chenko.

  A recorded brass band struck up a Sousa march as a bizarre assortment of costumed characters and prop carriers strolled out of the lobby, around the edge of the circular room, and into the Children’s Room.

  Kyle couldn’t make any sense of what he saw:

  A white knight.

  Two stagehands rolling a chest of drawers on wheels.

  A knitter working on a very long Christmas stocking that dragged behind her on the floor.

  A plate of eggs colored green.

  A girl carrying a shiny purple purse.

  An actress dressed up like a witch.

  A boy dressed like a poor orphan in one of Charles Dickens’s novels, carrying the letter “E.”

  Three waddling actors in penguin costumes.

  A bouquet of daylilies.

  An actor wearing a lion costume.

  A slice of ham on a plate.

  A man pushing a popcorn cart.

  A paper moon.

  And finally, one of the Alexandriaville reference librarians, Mrs. Maria Simon, carrying a crumpled copy of Time magazine.

  “Oh-kay,” said Kyle. “That was kind of random.”

  “No,” said Sierra, her confidence returning. “It’s pretty easy. You just have to put the pieces together. I can do this.”

  “Good,” said Akimi. “Because I sure can’t. All I got was Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.”

  “What?” said Kyle. “How?”

  “Yo,” said Miguel. “One dude had a plate of green eggs, another had a slice of ham?”

  “Oh. Right.”

  One by one, the teams sent a player into the Children’s Room. When it was Sierra’s turn, she went in and quickly came out with her list of book titles and authors:

  1. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

  2. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

  3. Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes

  4. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

  5. Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater

  6. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

  7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

  “Whoa,” said Akimi. “Wait a second. How’d you get ‘Pippi Longstocking’? I reme
mber the lady knitting the ‘long stocking,’ but how’d you get the ‘Pippi’ part?”

  “Easy,” said Sierra. “The Dickensian orphan boy was Pip from Great Expectations, and he was carrying the letter ‘E,’ making him Pip-E or, you know, Pippi.”

  “Brilliant,” said Miguel. “I would’ve missed that one. I might’ve missed Mr. Popper, too. He was the guy pushing the popcorn wagon, right?”

  Sierra nodded. “And, of course, Mrs. Simon with the crumpled copy of Time magazine was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.”

  “Nice,” said Kyle. “Way to climb back on that horse.”

  The other seven players eventually put together the same list of titles that Sierra had.

  But none of them did it as fast.

  The home team picked up the “I Did It!” medal, and just like that, they were back in the lead.

  On the fourth day of the competition, however, Kyle and his teammates didn’t fare so well.

  They lost the Bendable Bookworm medal to the Northeast team after a fierce game of Dewey Decimal Twister. The girl from Rhode Island, Cheryl Space, was extremely flexible.

  The Mid-Atlantic team, led by a skinny kid from Maryland named Elliott Schilpp, who could do some serious damage to a plate of food, scored the Eating It Up medal for reading while eating.

  In that game, played in the Book Nook Café, each team had to eat pizza while reading a Newbery Honor book from way back in the 1960s that none of the players had ever read before. When the pizza was gone, they had to answer a whole series of comprehension questions. The Mid-Atlantic gang devoured their pepperoni pies the fastest and then nailed every single question about When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

  Kyle congratulated the kids from Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.

  “Thanks,” they said, burping up pizza gas.

  On the bookmobile ride back to the Olympia Village motel, Kyle realized that, at the end of the fourth day and eighth game, there were only two days and four games left.

  Marjory Muldauer and the Midwest team hadn’t picked up any new medals on day four, either, so Team Kyle was still in the lead.