Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library

They decide to take turns spinning and pulling the matching color card but forego the moving of spaces on the board. Miguel spins and gets pink—General Knowledge. The top pink card from the newly acquired deck reads “0+27+0.4+????” (157). Miguel and Sierra know this means a call number, 027.4. Inside the Dewey Decimal room for General Knowledge, they find it: Get to Know Your Local Library, a kids’ guide from 1952. On the antiquated “Issued to” card in the glued-in paper pocket in the back of the book appears the name Luigi Lemoncello.

In the next scene, Charles uses his library card to reserve a conference meeting room for only Andrew, Haley, and himself. They compile their silhouetted images on a table, using blank cards they find in a drawer for placeholders for the books they have not yet found. On these they write “Need.” They have six of the 12 and determine they must find more.

Team Kyle returns to the Young Adult Room with the library guidebook, and Akimi takes her turn. She spins purple for Literature but pulls what appears to be a riddle wild card from the purple pile: “I rhyme with dart and crackerjacks. Visit me and find a rhyme for Andy” (163). Akimi gets the rhyme: Art and Artifacts. Inside the room, they brainstorm possibilities for a rhyme with Andy; Akimi finds a display of hats, including “This plaid fedora from 1968 […] worn by a guy named Leopold Loblolly” (164), famous as one of the Dandy Bandits. Sierra sees another display with Willie Wonka candy. They agree they need more clues in this game before they can deduce anything accurately like Sherlock Holmes.

Back at the game board, Sierra spins yellow and pulls a card with two numbers. One is a call number in the world religions Dewey room, but the other mystifies them: “Two-twenty-fifteen” (168). On the way to the 200s room, Sierra notices that the holographic author statues returned to the original choices, so Akimi prints the names in her notepad as potential clues. The book turns out to be The King James Bible. As they pull it from the shelves, a hologram of Johannes Gutenberg, who created a printing press that produced the Gutenberg Bible, greets them and offers help. Miguel tells him, “We’re looking for two-twenty-fifteen” (170), and Gutenberg explains that it is a Bible verse, Exodus (the second book of the Old Testament) Chapter 20, Verse 15. They discover it is one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not steal” (170).

Charles, Haley, and Andrew find two more Staff Picks books. They speculate on a few meanings, but Haley says they need the other four still-missing cards. She says she will return to the world languages Dewey room, and Charles lets her go to keep her out of the way; “[…] she would find nothing new and become less of a threat” (174). Once she leaves, Charles tells Andrew that what they need are Kyle’s clues.

Haley sees Kyle’s team with the Bible and knows that work is not a Staff Pick: “We’re following separate paths to the same goal […] And somewhere, those two paths are going to collide” (175). Inside the 400s room, Haley’s Irish ancestors, Patrick and Oona Daley, are superimposed on the featureless mannequins. They offer Irish wisdom; then an announcer voice says she gets another bonus. A wall panel slides open into the adjacent room, the 300s, where she finds one of the books they are searching for: True Crime Ohio: The Buckeye State’s Most Notorious Brigands, Burglars, and Bandits. Haley decides to keep the card, a rebus for bandits, secret from Charles and Andrew, hiding it in her shoe. She returns the book to the proper place on the shelf. She also looks into the camera and enthusiastically cheers on Mr. Lemoncello, confident that this bonus is a sign that he wants her to win.

As Kyle arranges a conference room for his team, Charles reminds him that Chiltingtons never lose. Once in the room, Akimi lists their clues on the dry-erase boards in categories: Definite Clues, Probably Clues, and Maybe Clues. Kyle takes a turn on the Bibliomania game. He spins green for Science: “Four and twenty were once in a pie. 598.367 might tell you why” (184). Miguel guesses the book will have to do with blackbirds.

The Dewey Decimal Room for Science contains models and a planetarium. In the Zoology section, a hologram of John James Audubon greets them. Sierra informs the others: “The famous ornithologist […] He studied and painted birds” (185). Kyle mistakes ornithologist for orthodontist. Audubon tells them that blackbirds can mimic sounds, and to prove it, a hologram of a blackbird sings like a police siren. They collect the book and leave as the Bengal tiger hologram stealthily approaches.

Still going after the Staff Picks, Charles and Andrew search for Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Because the fiction stacks soar high around the Reading Room, and because no call number is available, they have trouble figuring out how to search for the book. They looked in the 800s Literature and Children’s Sections already; Charles tries to coerce Andrew into strapping into the hover ladder, but Andrew is afraid. Finally, Andrew looks up the call number for the Anne sequel, Anne of Avonlea; then he recalls that fiction call numbers are always F plus the start of the author’s name: F-MON. Charles is angry; if Andrew had remembered this earlier it would have saved them hours: “You owe me for wasting all this time, Andrew. You owe me big time” (189). Charles goes up to fetch the book.

The card he finds inside has a rebus that probably stands for can. Mr. Lemoncello breaks in via loudspeaker to have Charles and Andrew play “Let’s Do a Deal” (190). To play, one of them simply has to choose one of three envelopes. Two contain good clues; the third is a Clunker Card with dire consequences. They agree to play and roll virtual dice; Charles gets 12 and Andrew gets two. Charles chooses the green envelope, but it is the Clunker Card. The punishment for picking the Clunker is no access for anyone to the Dewey Decimal Rooms for 14 hours (the total they rolled together). Andrew whines about the punishment; Charles realizes for the first time that Kyle and his team must be following a different set of steps and clues. He intends to use the downtime to take the information that Kyle’s team collected. He tells Andrew to find a way into Kyle’s meeting room using Sierra.

Mr. Lemoncello appears to Kyle’s team via a large plasma video screen in their meeting room, telling them that they can “use this time as a bonus, to think, read, and explore. Or you can run upstairs and play video games all night long” (196). Kyle tells him his team wants to win, and Mr. Lemoncello suggests reading some recommended books from Dr. Zinchenko.

In their meeting room, Charles lies to Andrew, telling him that Haley thinks Andrew is too unattractive for Mr. Lemoncello’s commercials; Charles wants Andrew to keep clues from Haley, and that’s exactly what Andrew decides to do. In the Café for dinner, Charles insists he will still win, despite the Clunker punishment. Haley sits with Andrew and Charles but does not reveal the clues she found. She says she intends to go to bed early and leaves.

Akimi sees Clarence the security guard leave books on the center desk. Kyle does not want to take advantage of extra clues unfairly, so he suggests to Charles and Andrew: “You two might want to do the same thing” (201), referring to reading. Charles says they intend to play video games (not educational ones) in his suite all night and invites Kyle. Kyle is tempted, especially when Charles says he can play Squirrel Squad Six, not even available to the public yet. Kyle, however, chooses to go read. The books turn out to be seven editions of the same book: The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Team Kyle settles in to read.

In a new scene, Haley discovers a section in the Lemoncello-abilia Room made up to look like Mr. Lemoncello’s bedroom he shared with siblings in his youth. In a milk crate bookcase by the bed, she finds one of the Staff Picks: Baby’s Mother Goose: Pat-a-Cake. The card inside has a rebus for crawled. She hides this clue in her shoe along with the bandits clue, figuring that just needs the Dewey Decimal Rooms in the morning to learn “exactly how and where the bandits had crawled in” (204).

Kyle enjoys Sherlock Holmes, thinking Mr. Lemoncello probably wanted them to take in some classic mysteries “[n]ot to find new clues but to become better puzzle solvers” (205). He decides to use his Ask an Expert. Kyle is connected via video chat to his brother Curtis at home. Kyle asks Curtis what the 10 authors whose holographic busts appear around the rotunda have in common. He names them all. Curtis thinks but does not know: “I’m sorry, Kyle. I have no earthly idea” (210).

Curtis says he can only think how Thomas Wolfe and Lewis Carroll both authored a book with “look” in the title. He apologizes, but Sierra is excited. She says she might be able to “crack the statue code” (212) with the help of a computer. While she works, Kyle and the others attempt to finish the Bibliomania game to ready their list of books by call number that they will fetch at soon as the Dewey doors unlock in the morning. They discover, however, that the remaining game cards only reveal more riddles and clues for the books they already found. They fret, but Sierra excitedly appears and says she knows where to find more call numbers: “Up on the ceiling!” (214).