Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics

Luigi Lemoncello drives the action of the novel and functions as its deuteragonist. He is a billionaire who made his money selling innovative and humorous games and books of puzzles. Because he grew up in Alexandriaville, Ohio and has fond memories of its former public library, he has used part of his fortune to create a large and technologically advanced new library for the town. Lemoncello’s generosity and love of games also prompt him to create contests for young people in which they complete challenges at his library to win fabulous prizes. Lemoncello is both an eccentric and comical figure and a serious advocate of learning, free access to information, and opportunities for young people.

Lemoncello’s eccentric and comical side is on display throughout the novel. He loves balloons and cake, incorporating them into the games at every opportunity. He wears strange costumes in most of his appearances, and his dialogue is full of wordplay. During one appearance, he says, “Let me recap,” and then pulls “a purple flower-petal swim cap…over his curly white hair” (187-88). The games he constructs—whether to sell to the public, entertain children at his library, or test the Library Olympians’ abilities—are creative, silly, and sometimes strange. “Yo…we’re talking about Luigi Lemoncello. Screwy is usually his first choice,” Miguel says at one point (217). Lemoncello’s connection of intellectual challenges with fun helps to reinforce the novel’s claims about The Joy of Intellectual Challenges.

Lemoncello has a more serious side, as well. He uses his games to educate young people, and he uses his fortune to increase their opportunities in the world. He also believes deeply in The Importance of Libraries: Not only has he created his own elaborate library in Alexandriaville, he uses it as an opportunity to reach out to young people nationwide and get them involved in their local libraries. The games he constructs for the Library Olympics and the two mottoes inscribed on the base of his statue by the end of the novel indicate his staunch belief in libraries as communal centers of learning and protectors of the right to free expression.

Charles Chiltington is a middle-schooler in Alexandriaville. He functions as an antagonist to Luigi Lemoncello and—to a lesser extent—to Kyle Keeley. Charles is a coddled and immature child whose life of privilege has given him an unjustified sense of entitlement. Before the story begins, Charles has been disqualified from another Lemoncello competition due to cheating—but throughout Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics, Charles is unable to understand that his actions are responsible for the consequences he has faced. He blames Lemoncello and tries to get his mother to shut down Lemoncello’s library. He also tries to get Kyle to give him a place on the Ohio hometown team for the new games—and he completely fails to understand why Kyle would, quite naturally, refuse.

Charles is a static character who never changes during the story. He is consistently depicted trying to impress others with his large vocabulary, manipulating the adults around him with obsequious flattery, and blaming others for his own choices. In the novel’s epilogue, despite the obvious failure of his plan to destroy Lemoncello and his library, Charles is still at it, picketing outside the library with a sign full of big words and false blame directed at others.

Each of Kyle’s three closest friends brings special skills and knowledge to the team as they compete in Mr. Lemoncello’s challenges, demonstrating The Power of Teamwork. Their academic knowledge and willingness to study hard to prepare for the competition are also critical to the Ohio team’s success because Kyle—the team’s expert in games and puzzles—does not have the persistence or aptitude needed to memorize the library-related information they need to know for the Library Olympics. Although each of the three is a flat and static character, the narrative does give enough details about them to distinguish them from each other.

Sierra is devoted to reading; in her first appearance in the story, she is yet again rereading her favorite book, happily surrounded by the library’s tall fiction stacks. Although Sierra can lose confidence in her abilities at times, she brings a well-developed sense of ethics to the competition and unfailingly guides others toward moral behavior. She is the one who wants to share information with the other teams when the library cards are first distributed, for instance, because she believes in a level playing field. Sierra also turns down Woody’s “Go to College Free” card, showing that she is invested in the Joy of Intellectual Challenges and in proving herself through competition.

Miguel loves libraries themselves—he has been the president of his school’s Library Aid Society for three years. He knows everything about the Dewey decimal system and the organization of libraries. Miguel is an understanding person and the teammate Kyle most often confides in. Like Sierra, he believes in competing with integrity. He also refuses Woody’s offer of a “Go to College Free” card and at one point tells Kyle that “what counts is how you play the game” (157).

Akimi is the cleverest of the group and is especially talented at scientific and engineering tasks. She is a fierce competitor and can sometimes be tempted by slightly unethical behavior—Akimi is more willing than Sierra to keep information from the other groups, for instance. Despite the occasional temptation, Akimi never engages in genuinely unethical behavior, and she is the team member most responsible for reining in Kyle’s bad behavior. When the pressure of the competition gets to him and he is rude to Sierra, Miguel, and Andrew, Akimi is not afraid to point out his faults and urge him to be a better person and better teammate.

Andrew Peckleman is an eighth grader in Alexandriaville who works part-time at the Blue Jay Extended Stay Lodge. Marjory thinks of Andrew as a “nerdy boy” with “goggle glasses” (146), but she does respect his library knowledge and logical thinking. In the first book in the Mr. Lemoncello’s Library series, he was one of the competitors who was disqualified for cheating. In the wake of this incident, Andrew quit the school’s Library Aid Society and claimed to hate libraries. By the time Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics begins, however, Mr. Lemoncello believes that Andrew only cheated because Charles bullied him into it, and part of Lemoncello’s quest in this book is to revive Andrew’s love of libraries.

For much of the novel, Lemoncello’s faith in Andrew seems misguided. Andrew expresses scorn for Lemoncello and the way he runs his library, bonds with Marjory and Charles, and celebrates Lemoncello’s apparent downfall after the missing books are discovered. As soon as he fully understands the nature of the plot against Lemoncello, however, he immediately goes to Kyle and joins the effort to save the library. He explains that he does disapprove of many of Lemoncello’s ideas about how to run the library, but he “[respects] his right to stock his shelves with whatever books he chooses” and thinks library patrons have every “right to read them” (228). Andrew cleverly deduces several important aspects of the mystery of the missing books and, having regained his love for the library, is rewarded for his help with a spot on the library board at the end of the novel.

Dr. Zinchenko is the “world-famous librarian” who runs the Lemoncello Library. Despite her world-famous status, she is a humble person, unfailingly polite to both Lemoncello and library patrons. She is often depicted pitching in with the manual labor of running the library—hauling bags of mail, for instance. Lemoncello also depends on her organizational abilities. Zinchenko is the person to whom he delegates the job of setting up the regional competitions for the Library Olympics, and after his comical entrances on each of the game days, Zinchenko is the one he leaves in charge of explaining the details of each game to the contestants. Zinchenko also has a self-assured air of authority; she wears flashy, bright red clothing and can hold a crowd’s attention with ease.

Like many of the librarians in the Mr. Lemoncello’s Library books, Dr. Yanina Zinchenko is named after one of the real-life librarians who have assisted Grabenstein during his writing career. The real Dr. Zinchenko is a librarian with the Knox County Schools in Tennessee.

Susana is Charles Chiltington’s mother and the founder of the League of Concerned Library Lovers. She functions as an antagonist to Lemoncello. She is a flat and static character, a caricature of the kind of rich, pretentious person only interested in impressing and intimidating others with their own wealth and family connections. When she first meets Luigi Lemoncello, for instance, she stresses the “Willoughby” part of her name and lets Lemoncello know that her brother is James Willoughby the third, the current head of the Library of Congress. Susana can bend some people to her will with relative ease: Soon after Charles puts the idea of shutting Lemoncello down into her head, she has formed a committee, the League of Concerned Library Lovers. When her first meeting with Lemoncello is disappointing, she warns him ominously that she will be back, and that next time there will be even more people in her group. Susana is so used to getting her way and being deferred to that she does not know what to make of Lemoncello’s dismissal of her and her demands.

For most of the novel, Susana’s motives for trying to oust Lemoncello from the library seem to be a combination of prudery and overprotectiveness. She claims to be protecting the town’s young people from information and experiences that they are not old enough to process effectively. Susana’s real motivations, however, turn out to be slightly more complex. She is specifically trying to keep copies of a history book about piracy from circulating in her community, as this book gives details about her family’s past that she does not want publicly known.

Marjory is a middle-schooler from Michigan who competes in the Library Olympics for the Midwest team. She is very tall for her age: Akimi thinks that Marjory looks “like a praying mantis” (52). Marjory is a serious girl, devoted to books, education, and—as she says—“libraries qua libraries” (39). When Sierra sees a video of Marjory’s performance in the Midwest finals, she thinks that Marjory looks “sort of sad” (52). Marjory thinks that libraries should be quiet, book-filled places for study and research without the “gadgets and gizmos and holographic displays” that Lemoncello favors (39). Marjory is a know-it-all who delights in showing off her knowledge, correcting others and quizzing them on arcane information. She is not a team player, and she is sure that she alone is responsible for all of her team’s victories. She can also be sarcastic and condescending, such as when she asks Dr. Zinchenko whether the 11th game will involve “[d]rinking milk shakes while floating books in a hot tub” (181). In these ways, she functions as a foil to Kyle’s sincerity, team spirit, and sense of humor.

For most of the novel, Marjory is a ruthless competitor dedicated to the idea of defeating Kyle and his team and thereby demonstrating her superior grasp of library science. In this way, she also functions as an antagonist for Kyle. Even after she accepts Woody Peckleman’s “Go to College Free” card from Susana, in exchange for removing the last copy of Flora and Ulysses from the Lemoncello Library—and thus no longer needs to compete to secure herself a college education—Marjory stays in the competition. Her goal is to “[crush] Kyle Keeley.” Marjory is a dynamic character, however, who learns from her own bad choices. After she learns that her theft of the book has badly hurt Lemoncello and that Susana plans to ban many books from the library once it is under her committee’s control, Marjory feels so bad about what she has done that she goes to talk it over with a priest. She is so distraught over Woody’s threatened book burning that she cries and begs him not to burn the books. Marjory shows the depth of her commitment to free expression when she is the first to offer her “Go to College Free” card as stakes in the game Kyle plays with Woody at the end of the story.