“Can I ask you a question?” he asked her.
“Of course.”
“Did your mother really make a birthday wish about turning Mr. Lemoncello into a hologram?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
The holographic librarian, Ms. Waintraub, appeared beside Dr. Zinchenko. “I’m afraid you would need to do extensive research to find out the truth,” she said.
“And if you did,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “you might discover that this holographic reference librarian identified a threat to the library when the Krinkle brothers unexpectedly turned up here in Ohio.”
“I did,” said Ms. Waintraub.
“You might also learn,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “that her software is programmed to automatically transmit perceived dangers directly to me, no matter where in the world I might be located. Furthermore, if, in your research, you were to interview me, Dr. Yanina Zinchenko, you might realize that if I could not be present to protect Mr. Lemoncello in a time of crisis, then there is only one other individual whom I would trust to do that job for me. Someone I needed to be in the library this week. Someone who would do whatever it took to defend Mr. Lemoncello.”
Kyle gulped a little. “Me?”
Dr. Zinchenko grinned. “Ah. Very good, Mr. Keeley. In this instance, your first answer is the correct answer. And may I add one more thing?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you for doing my job so well.”
Of course not!
There is one more puzzle in the book that wasn’t in the story, although there were several clues about how to find it. (And, yes, it could be that simple.) So do your research and send your answer to [email protected].
Flop. Failure. Fiasco.
Not words you usually associate with Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, and Michael Jordan.
Well, how about J. K. Rowling, Albert Einstein, Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney, Lucille Ball, the Beatles, Steve Jobs, Charlie Chaplin, and Dr. Seuss? All these famously successful people failed before they succeeded.
They had to dust themselves off, pick themselves up, and try again.
Robert Kennedy once said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
Or as Thomas Edison put it, “Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Resilience is what attracted me to the historical figures selected for the new displays in Mr. Lemoncello’s Library—the ability to spring back into shape after being bent, stretched, or rejected.
We sometimes forget how much hard work went into what now seems so obvious. Dr. Seuss was my favorite author when I was a kid. I just took for granted that his genius was destined to be recognized, that his books were bound to be published. I never realized that Theodor Seuss Geisel’s first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected by twenty-seven different publishers. Legend has it he was on his way home to burn the manuscript when he bumped into a college classmate who had just that very morning started a job as a children’s book editor.
Oh, the places we readers never would’ve gone if Dr. Seuss had given up on Mulberry Street.
My first bestseller, Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, was almost never published. I worked on it for two years and rewrote 50 percent of the manuscript eight different times. My editor and I almost gave up and said, “Let’s burn the manuscript and write something else.”
I’m so glad we didn’t.
I’m also glad that while working on that book I had Chinese food for dinner one night. Inside my fortune cookie was a slip of paper with these words of wisdom: “Fall down seven times, stand up eighth time.”
I taped that fortune to my computer monitor and kept clacking on the keyboard.
It’s like the famous football coach Vince Lombardi said: “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
Here’s a complete list of the books mentioned or alluded to in Mr. Lemoncello’s Great Library Race. How many have you read?
☐ The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America by Ernest Freeberg
☐ Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
☐ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
☐ Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett
☐ The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
☐ The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer
☐ The Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald J. Sobol
☐ Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein
☐ Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath
☐ Finding the Worm by Mark Goldblatt
☐ Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman
☐ Frindle by Andrew Clements
☐ The Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman
☐ The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
☐ Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
☐ The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
☐ Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss
☐ Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
☐ Laughing at My Nightmare by Shane Burcaw
☐ Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T. E. Lawrence by Jeremy Wilson
☐ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
☐ Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton
☐ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss
☐ Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm
☐ The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan
☐ Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
☐ Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
☐ The Puzzling World of Winston Breen by Eric Berlin
☐ Roget and His Thesaurus by Jen Bryant
☐ Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
☐ Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis
☐ Unstoppable by Tim Green
☐ The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
☐ The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
☐ Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
☐ Wonder by R. J. Palacio
☐ The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
☐ A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
No Lemoncello book would be possible without the help of a bazillion wondermous people:
My wife and first editor (not to mention the love of my life), J.J.
The librarian whose school I visited and whose name I wish I could remember, because she’s the one who told me I should do a book about research meaning re-searching.
My Random House editor, Shana Corey, who is so much fun to work with. You should read her book The Secret Subway, about New York’s first subway. She knows how to make research fun!
Special thanks to editorial assistant Maya Motayne, who, in addition to everything else, tallies up all the books mentioned in these books!
My agent, Eric Myers, and the whole team at Dystel, Goderich and Bourret.
Copyeditors and book dedicatees Barbara Bakowski and Alison Kolani. I hope I spelled their names correctly.
Art director Nicole de las Heras and cover artist extraordinaire Gilbert Ford.
Production manager Tim Terhune (because these books are quite a production).
Special thanks to all of Mr. Lemoncello’s friends at Random House Children’s Books who have done so much to get his books into the hands of so many kiddos: John Adamo, Kerri Benvenuto, Judith Haut, Jules Kelly, Kim Lauber, Mallory Loehr, Barbara Marcus, Michelle Nagler, and Stephanie O’Cain.
Dr. Zinchenko would like to personally thank Mr. Lemoncello’s special friends in the RHCB School and Library Marketing department: Laura Antonacci, Lisa Nadel, Kristin Schulz, and the very real (and not at all robotic) Adrienne Waintraub.
Public thanks to all Mr. Lemoncello’s ext
ra-special friends in the publicity department: Dominique Cimina, Aisha Cloud, Cassie McGinty, and Casey Ward.
And where would the Imagination Factory be without the sensational sales team led by Felicia Frazier? Thanks to Joe English, Bobbie Ford, Becky Green, Kimberly Langus, Deanna Meyeroff, Sarah Nasif, Mark Santella, Richard Vallejo, and the entire Random House sales team, who were, and still are, some of Mr. Lemoncello’s most ardent supporters.
Finally, thanks to all the parents, teachers, librarians, kids, and readers who send me emails, drawings of your favorite characters, and sweet thank-you cards. You guys make me smile every day.
is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics, The Island of Dr. Libris, the Welcome to Wonderland series, and many other books, as well as the coauthor of numerous page-turners with James Patterson, including the I Funny, House of Robots, and Treasure Hunters series, Word of Mouse, and Jacky Ha-Ha. If you were to do research on Chris, you’d discover he was born in Buffalo, New York (where there was a domed bank just like the one Mr. Lemoncello turned into his library); moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, when he was ten; and had a high school physics teacher named Mr. Raymo. Chris lives in New York City with his wife, J.J. You can visit him at ChrisGrabenstein.com.
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Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race Page 18