Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics

Charles Chiltington competed against Kyle and his friends in the contest at the library. Mr. Lemoncello disqualified Charles for what Charles thinks was a “trumped-up technicality,” and now he is jealous of Kyle and his friends and feels cheated. Charles is from a wealthy and powerful family and resents losing to people he thinks of as ordinary. He wants revenge against Kyle’s team and against Mr. Lemoncello. He knows that his mother disapproves of the flashy new library: He has heard her say that it has “[t]oo much sizzle, not enough steak” and that it loans out “too many of the wrong sort of books” (6). Charles decides that the best plan is to get his mother to spearhead a pressure campaign from local citizens to shut the library down. He whines to his mother, telling her that, because of being disqualified by Mr. Lemoncello and losing the game to Kyle’s team, his self-esteem has dropped so low he may be unable to go to college. She is aghast and promises to make everything better.

During their school’s winter break, Kyle and his friends spend much of their time at Mr. Lemoncello’s library enjoying its educational games and enormous stacks of books. They also enjoy the celebrity that starring in the commercials has brought them. One day when Kyle enters the library, he finds Sierra completely absorbed in Bud, Not Buddy, one of her favorite books. Kyle is not much of a reader, and he admits that he has not read this particular book. When he tells Sierra that he is on his way upstairs to the Electronic Learning Center to meet Akimi and Miguel and play the new Charlemagne’s Chivalry game, Sierra corrects his misunderstanding of who Charlemagne is. In the ELC, Kyle runs into Haley Daley. Haley announces that her family is moving to Hollywood so that she can pursue some of the acting opportunities that have opened up to her since starring in Lemoncello’s commercials. Kyle wishes her well and then joins Miguel and Akimi at the Charlemagne game. Akimi, bored with the game, leaves Miguel and Kyle trying to decide whether their next best move is to feed some hungry peasants or slay a menacing dragon.

On the bus on the Monday morning after their break ends, Sierra is reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, “because everybody keeps saying that Mr. Lemoncello reminds them of Willy Wonka,” even though Sierra’s opinion is that “Mr. Lemoncello is much kinder” than Wonka (15). A sixth grader named Alexa asks for Kyle’s help solving a rebus puzzle from one of Mr. Lemoncello’s puzzle books. The solution is “[l]ibrarians are intellectual freedom fighters” (17). Kyle feels proud and happy when Alexa tells him that he is her hero. He thinks that it is wonderful to get so much attention and praise simply for playing games well.

At school, Miguel draws the others’ attention to some critical online comments. People are unhappy that Mr. Lemoncello’s game was limited to seventh graders at one school in Alexandriaville, Ohio. They claim that, given the chance to compete with Kyle and his team, they would be able to beat them. Mrs. Yunghans, the school librarian, tells them to ignore others’ jealousy. One especially overwrought commenter claims that the group cheated, and Mr. Lemoncello is covering it up. The post suggests that Lemoncello should be run out of town. Kyle and his friends notice that the post is signed “C.C.,” and they immediately suspect its author is Charles Chiltington.

At the Lemoncello library, Mr. Lemoncello is testing the new “browse” function on the hover ladders that carry patrons up to find what they are looking for in the very tall stacks of books. Librarian Dr. Yanina Zinchenko interrupts, bringing in a large sack of mail and telling Lemoncello that they have something important to discuss. Just then, Charles’s mother, Susana Willoughby Chiltington, enters the library with a small committee and demands to speak to Lemoncello. She stresses the “Willoughby” part of her name, wanting Lemoncello to know that her brother is James F. Willoughby III, the head librarian for the Library of Congress. She informs Lemoncello that, as a public library, the Lemoncello Library should have a board of trustees. Lemoncello tells her that her energy would be better spent on Charles than on the library, but before he and Zinchenko disappear into another room, he concedes that he has also been thinking that the library needs a board.

Kyle and his friends all receive invitations to a meeting at the library, where Mr. Lemoncello intends to announce “STUPENDOUS NEW NEWS” (27). Kyle meets with Sierra and Miguel by the statue of Mr. Lemoncello squirting water from his mouth. The statue’s pedestal bears Lemoncello’s motto: “KNOWLEDGE NOT SHARED REMAINS UNKNOWN” (29). Sierra mentions that she hopes Andrew Peckleman will not attend the meeting. Andrew was on Charles’s team in the previous game; he was also disqualified after he and Charles tricked Sierra out of her library card as part of a scheme to spy on Kyle’s team. Miguel says that Andrew will not be at the meeting since he hates libraries now. Akimi enters, and the four friends move into the Rotunda Reading Room, where Mr. Lemoncello will make his announcement. The video screens on the “Wonder Dome,” the Rotunda’s ceiling, display all 50 state flags along with a couple in Ancient Greek dress driving a chariot. Below the screens are holograms of famous ancient Olympians.

Mr. Lemoncello makes a comical entrance into the Rotunda, sliding down the banister and doing a backflip. He explains that, because of the huge outpouring of public interest in a new game at the library, he has decided to hold the “first-ever Library Olympics” for teams from all over the country to compete in, deciding “once and for all, who are this sweet land of liberty’s true library champions” (34). He proposes teams of five, and when he learns that Haley has moved and Kyle’s team is down to four members, he suggests that they invite Andrew Peckleman to join their team. In Lemoncello’s opinion, Andrew only cheated in the first game because Charles pressured him to, and he deserves a second chance. When Kyle’s team assures Lemoncello that Andrew hates libraries now and would not be interested, Lemoncello decides that all the teams will have four members. There will be 12 events in the competition, and the members of the team that wins the most events will all be awarded full college scholarships.

Competitions are held around the country to begin narrowing down contestants in each of seven regions. Only middle-schoolers are allowed to compete in the Dewey-decimal-based scavenger hunt qualifying game. One player draws a lot of public attention. Marjory Muldauer, from the Midwest region, “had memorized the ten categories of the Dewey decimal system before she entered preschool,” reads six books every day, and can “do two crossword puzzles at once—with a ballpoint pen” (38-39). When Marjory is interviewed, she expresses disapproval of Lemoncello and his library. She says that she needs the college scholarship, which is why she is competing, but she does not believe that library research should be treated like a game. She also dislikes Lemoncello’s insistence that each winner gets cake and balloons because “[c]ake has no place in a library” (39). She complains that the Lemoncello Library is more like Disneyland than a serious library and calls Lemoncello himself immature.

Worried about losing to competitors like Marjory, Kyle tries to back out of the competition. When he suggests that his team replace him with Andrew, Miguel tells him that they need his ability to solve puzzles and play games as well as his leadership. He points out that each team member has specialties the team needs: Sierra has read many books, Akimi is very smart, and Miguel is their library expert. In any case, Andrew is too busy with his new job sweeping up and filling bird feeders at his recently discovered great-uncle’s new motel, the Blue Jay Extended Stay Lodge. The pressure of knowing that competitors like Marjory are “gunning for” him is getting to Kyle, and he has been on a losing streak in the games he has played recently. Since the Library Olympics will be focused more on serious library topics than the previous scavenger-hunt-type game he played at the Lemoncello Library, Kyle feels sure that he does not belong on the team, despite his teammates’ reassurances.

On the first Saturday in March, the seven regional finalist competitions take place. In the Pacific region, the finals are decided by a synchronized book-cart drill. In the Mountain region, finalist spots are secured by solving a puzzle that involves spotting errors in a written passage and putting them together into a secret phrase. In the Southwest, contestants solve a rebus involving a Neil Gaiman quote about librarians. In the Midwest, Marjory and other contestants compete to identify which books famous first lines come from and then solve a Dewey decimal challenge. Marjory overwhelmingly dominates the competition.