Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics

by Chris Grabenstein

  The adults sat up front with the driver.

  The kids were in the back with the books and a mini-fridge stocked with chocolate milk, pop, and six different kinds of juice.

  “So,” said Miguel, “did Andrew’s weird uncle talk to any of you guys last night?”

  “He talked to me this morning,” said Sierra. “When I was on my way to the breakfast room.”

  “What did he want?” asked Kyle.

  “He told me he could give me a ‘Go to College Free’ card,” said Sierra.

  Miguel nodded. “Me too.”

  “And why wasn’t I offered this card?” asked Akimi.

  Miguel shrugged. “Maybe because I turned him down.”

  “So did I,” said Sierra.

  “What did he want in exchange for the card?” asked Kyle.

  “Worms for his baby birds?” suggested Akimi.

  “He didn’t really say,” replied Miguel. “I turned him down before he had a chance.”

  “Me too,” said Sierra. “I also reminded him that winning a college scholarship isn’t the only reason we’re playing these games.”

  “Really?” said Akimi, arching an eyebrow. “What other reason is there?”

  “To prove that we truly deserve to be crowned champions.”

  “Oh. Right. That.”

  “This could be part of the game,” said Kyle.

  “Seriously?” said Akimi.

  “Yep. Mr. Peckleman is kind of working for Mr. Lemoncello this week—running Olympia Village. And in Mr. Lemoncello’s Marvelously Mysterious Mine Shaft game, there are devious dwarves who offer you cheat cards that let you do stuff like use elf shovels even if you’re not an elf. But elf shovels, you find out after it’s too late, can’t dig up diamonds, only gold, and you need a ton of gold plus two diamonds to win.”

  Sierra nodded very slowly. “You’ve played a lot of Mr. Lemoncello’s games, haven’t you, Kyle?”

  “Enough to know that most of his cheat cards eventually come back to bite you in the butt.”

  When Kyle and his teammates entered the library’s grand rotunda, the room was more crowded than they had ever seen it.

  Spectators, staring up at the Wonder Dome, were seated at the four rings of tables. The players from the seven other teams milled around, oohing and aahing at things Kyle and his friends now took for granted, like the holographic statues perched on their pedestals, peering down at the crowd below. The statues were waving at people who were waving up at them.

  Kyle recognized only one of the projected images—a greenish bald guy wearing bifocals and pants cut off at the knees and tugging on a kite string. That had to be Benjamin Franklin.

  “Who are those other people?” he whispered.

  “Famous librarians,” said Miguel. “Melvil Dewey, Eratosthenes, Saint Lawrence, Lewis Carroll—the usual suspects.”

  Kyle nodded. He was so glad Miguel was on his team.

  “In honor of the ancient Olympic Games,” reported Akimi, “they have all sorts of Grecian urns up in the Art and Artifacts Room. And you can check out Mr. Lemoncello’s old gym shoes in the Lemoncello-abilia Room on the third floor. Bring a gas mask.”

  “I heard Muhammad Ali is boxing Rocky Balboa in the IMAX theater,” added Miguel. “Winner wrestles Hercules.”

  Up on the Wonder Dome screens, Kyle saw the enormous image of eight empty library carts and two rolling bins bulging with books. They seemed to be parked in front of the doors to the 000s Dewey decimal room on the second floor.

  “Welcome, children!” cried a trembling voice. “I’m so glad you are all finally here! What took you so long?”

  Kyle looked toward the circulation desk in the center of the round room. Usually, that was where Dr. Zinchenko and her staff worked, helping people find whatever information or books they were looking for. During the escape game, a holographic version of Mr. Lemoncello’s favorite childhood librarian, Mrs. Gail Tobin, had popped in to help administer clues.

  Today’s guest-librarian hologram, the lady with the trembling voice, was somebody new.

  She looked frazzled. Worn out. The way teachers sometimes look at the end of a really long day right before spring break.

  “My name is Lonni Gause,” said the shaky see-through librarian. She was nervously nibbling a pencil as though it were a cob of corn. “I was the very last librarian at the old Alexandriaville Public Library—the one they bulldozed down so they could build a parking garage.” She started sobbing. “Oh, the horror! The horror!”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Gause,” said Dr. Zinchenko, striding into the room from a section of the fiction bookshelves that swung open like a hidden passageway in a castle. “Welcome to day one of our competition, Library Olympians. Today we begin our quest for champions!”

  “Yes!” cried the holographic librarian. “We need champions. We also need defenders! We needed them all those years ago when, first, books started disappearing off the shelves and, then, the wrecking balls rumbled up Main Street. Oh, the horror. The horror!”

  Dr. Zinchenko pointed and clicked a miniature remote at the wailing librarian. The librarian disappeared.

  “Perhaps we’ll hear more from Mrs. Gause. Later. Now, however, it is time for our first game. Will all thirty-two contestants please report to the second-floor balcony? Spectators? You may witness the event, live and in high-definition color, up on the Wonder Dome.”

  “This way, you guys,” Kyle said to the kids from out of town as he headed toward the nearest spiral staircase. All the Library Olympians followed and clomped up the metal steps.

  “Kindly report to your assigned library cart,” said a soothing female voice oozing out of the second floor’s ceiling speakers. “And remember, free people read freely.”

  Marjory Muldauer, walking with her Midwest teammates, chuffed a sarcastic laugh. “Thanks for the sappy bumper sticker, ceiling lady.”

  The second floor was a carpeted, circular balcony, with the same circumference as the Rotunda Reading Room below. The twelve-foot-wide balcony was lined with evenly spaced massive wooden doors that opened up into the ten Dewey decimal rooms.

  Eight library carts—three tiers of slanted shelves on wheels—were lined up in front of the door to the 000s room. Across from them stood two canvas bins, both loaded with books.

  Each library cart was labeled with two laminated cards: one with the name of a team, the other designating a range of Dewey decimal numbers. The Hometown Heroes’ empty cart was labeled “900–999.”

  “That’s for history and geography,” Miguel reminded Kyle.

  “Welcome to our first event: the Library Cart Relay Race,” said Dr. Zinchenko, coming through another secret panel. This one was cut into the back of the curved fiction bookcases, which climbed past the second floor on their way up to the dome. “To win this game, your team must be the first to complete four laps of the second-floor balcony without spilling any of the three dozen books stacked on your rolling shelves, no matter the obstacles.”

  Marjory Muldauer’s arm shot up.

  “Yes?” said Dr. Zinchenko.

  “There aren’t any books on the library carts.”

  “No? Oh, that’s right. The library has been closed for a week, so all of the recently returned books—exactly two hundred and eighty-eight different titles, thirty-six from each of eight different Dewey categories—are presently stored in one of those two rolling bins. You must find the books that belong in your group, carefully load your cart, and, then, each team member must complete one full lap of the balcony and cleanly pass the cart off to the next relay racer. The team that finishes first will take home today’s first medal and move closer to their college scholarships. I suggest choosing your swiftest cart pusher for the final leg.”

  “That’s you, Akimi,” said Kyle. “You’re the fastest.”

  “I’m the slowest,” said Miguel.

  “I’m pretty slow, too,” added Sierra. “I’m more of a reader than a racer.”

  “That’s okay
,” said Kyle. “You two will be in charge of finding our books for us.”

  “The numbers should be on the spine,” said Miguel. “Look for anything that starts with a nine.”

  “By the way,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “to make this game more challenging, we have temporarily covered up all the call numbers on the spines of the books in the bins.”

  “Oh-kay,” said Akimi. “So much for that idea.”

  “Find books about historical events and places you’ve always wanted to visit,” suggested Sierra.

  “How about the bathroom?” said Kyle, feeling queasy. “I wouldn’t mind visiting it right now.”

  “Relax, bro,” said Miguel. “Sierra and I will load the cart. You and Akimi need to run real fast once it’s good to go.”

  “You take the first leg,” said Akimi. “Try to buy us an early lead.”

  Kyle nodded. He was pretty swift. Not as fast as Akimi, but thanks to his big brother Mike the Jock, he was used to running wind sprints. “I’ll give it my best shot.”

  “Please stand by,” said the soothing ceiling voice. “Once your cart is fully loaded, do not block, trip, or shove the other teams. Do not interfere with their cart handoffs.”

  “In other words,” said a new voice in the ceiling—Mr. Lemoncello’s—“play nice, cart runners—not to be confused with kite runners, a book you should all definitely read when you’re a little older. Dr. Zinchenko? Let the book-sorting shindig begin!”

  Dr. Zinchenko raised her arm. She was holding a fancy tasseled bookmark between her fingers as if it were a small flag.

  “On your mark,” she said. “Get set. Go!”

  She lowered the bookmark.

  The race was on!

  Kyle and Akimi hung back while Sierra and Miguel dug through the book bins with a couple dozen other eager Dewey decimal decoders.

  A short, scrappy kid from the Southeast team leapt into one of the rolling canvas containers and tossed out language books (the 400s) to his teammates.

  Marjory Muldauer simply stood next to the book heaps and pointed. “That one. That one. That one, too.”

  “That’s our first twelve!” said Miguel when he and Sierra filled the lowest shelf of the library cart with their first two armloads of books. “Only two dozen more to go!”

  If somebody put a wrong book on a cart, the lady in the ceiling said, “Sorry, Northeast team,” or “Sorry, Pacific team.” Then she urged them to “please try again.”

  Sierra and Miguel didn’t make a single mistake. Neither did Marjory Muldauer.

  The guys from the Pacific and Northeast teams goofed up the most. They kept mixing up their 100s (philosophy and psychology) with their 200s (religion).

  “Go!” said Miguel, loading the thirty-sixth book about history and geography onto Team Kyle’s cart.

  Kyle took off at the exact same second as the first relay racer for Marjory Muldauer’s Midwest team.

  The front left wheel on Kyle’s rumbling three-tiered wagon was wobbly. Like a grocery cart with a squished grape stuck to one of its tires.

  The whole library cart was shimmying.

  But he didn’t slow down.

  After he passed through the tunnel behind the fiction shelves and hit the doors to the 300s room, he was in the lead.

  He aimed for the inside railing, figuring the tighter the circle he ran, the faster he’d complete his lap.

  Pranav Pillai from the Pacific team came tearing up on his left. They must’ve sorted out their confusion about the 100s and 200s faster than Kyle had thought they would.

  Then Pillai did something absolutely amazing. He twirled around in place—while running. He moved his hands over each other and behind his back as he executed a total 360-degree rotation.

  Kyle had to slow down a little to nod and give the guy some props.

  “Later, dude!” Pillai hollered as he flew past Kyle. He swerved inside to hug the balcony railing that Kyle had wanted to hug.

  That’s when Kyle remembered that to make the Pacific team, you had to pass the West Coast librarian’s final test: a synchronized library-cart drill. The California, Oregon, and Washington State kids weren’t pros, but they were definitely the best library-cart handlers in the building.

  By the time Kyle completed his circuit around the balcony and reached the 000s door to hand off the cart to Miguel, the Pacific team’s second runner, Kathy Narramore from Oregon, was already four doors ahead of him. When she saw a crimp in the carpet, she did a front flip over the rolling buggy so she could pull it behind her for a while before she did a somersaulting backflip so she could push it again.

  Meanwhile, Miguel hit the bump and sent a stack of books tumbling off the cart’s slanted shelves.

  By the time Miguel finally reloaded the cart, pushed it around the balcony, and handed it off to Sierra, the Pacific team’s fourth and final runner was ready to lap her.

  Sierra made it as far as the 500s door when the Pacific team’s closer sprinted across the finish line.

  Akimi never even got into the race.

  The Hometown Heroes had lost.

  The Pacific team took the first medal of the duodecimalthon.

  “Congratulations on your Gold medal,” said Dr. Zinchenko as she draped a ribboned medallion over each of the winning team members’ heads.

  “No worries,” said Kyle, trying to buck up his teammates, even though he was starting to have those “champions become chumps” feelings again. “We’ll take the next one.”

  “Definitely,” said Miguel.

  “Unless,” said Akimi, “it involves running with a rolling suitcase.”

  —

  During the lunch break, the Pacific team kids did interviews with NPR, PBS, and the Book Network.

  “That used to be us,” groused Akimi.

  “Come on,” said Kyle. “You didn’t think we’d win every single game, did you?”

  “No. I didn’t think it. But I was kind of counting on it anyway.”

  “My bad,” said Miguel. “I lost all that time when I hit that bump.”

  Kyle glanced at Sierra. She had a smile on her face. Because she was reading again, and apparently, The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm was a very amusing book.

  —

  At two p.m., all eight teams were once again summoned to the second floor.

  The library carts, each one still loaded down with three dozen books, were parked, once again, in front of the 000s door.

  “Great,” muttered Akimi. “A rematch.”

  “Teams,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “it is now time for our second contest. In game number two, you must put all of your books back on the shelves in the exact spot where they belong. Therefore, you will need to first properly determine the full Dewey decimal number for all thirty-six of your assigned books and then place them in their proper shelf slots in your Dewey decimal room.”

  Kyle looked at Miguel.

  “We can do this,” said Miguel. “It’s why we ran all those drills after school.”

  “Teams?” said Dr. Zinchenko. “Please return to your carts.”

  The eight teams clustered around their carts to size up their thirty-six titles.

  Miguel, Sierra, and Akimi tilted their heads and squinted. Kyle could tell they were already noodling out numbers.

  Great. They could do that part. Kyle would be in charge of running real fast and slamming the books into the shelves.

  They had a chance.

  A good chance.

  —

  It took Team Kyle only one hour and twenty-two minutes to correctly code and reshelf all thirty-six books.

  Unfortunately, the Midwest team, led by Marjory Muldauer, did it in under an hour.

  Marjory and her teammates would be awarded four Olympian medals.

  “Looks like that’s one for us”—Marjory smirked at Kyle—“and none for you.”

  The medal ceremony took place under the Wonder Dome, which, to honor the idea behind the second game, was operating in its spectac
ular Dewey decimal mode. The ten pizza-slice video screens scrolled constantly changing images associated with each category in the library cataloging system.

  “Hey, Kyle,” Miguel whispered as Dr. Zinchenko draped an Olympian medal around Marjory Muldauer’s neck. “How come they have different names for the medals? Why aren’t they all just, you know, ‘gold’?”

  Kyle shrugged. “Maybe to make it easier for us to remember that we lost two different games today.”

  But tomorrow would be another day.

  With two new games to play.

  Kyle just hoped his team didn’t lose both of those games, too.

  Charles Chiltington brought a tray of cucumber finger sandwiches (with the crusts trimmed off) into the living room, where his mother was hosting a meeting of the League of Concerned Library Lovers.

  The seven ladies and one gentleman in a bow tie were huddled around a laptop, their horrified eyes glued to the screen.

  “This is an abomination!” said one of the committee members, watching a recap of the Lemoncello Library Olympics’ first day of competition on the Book Network’s website.

  Charles knew what “abomination” meant (anything greatly disliked). He used big words whenever possible. It impressed teachers, especially when you used words they didn’t understand. Charles kept a list: “panacea,” “panoply,” “pedantic.” And those were just the ones that started with “p.” He was very sesquipedalian (given to the use of long words) where others were perspicuous (clear in expression and easily understood).

  He was also elated (very happy, jubilant, in high spirits) to hear all the adults complaining about Mr. Lemoncello and his egregious (shockingly bad) library.

  “It’s preposterous,” said the gentleman in the bow tie. “Racing around in circles with library carts? Restocking shelves? Are these children applying for part-time jobs? Because they’re all far too young to be legally employed.”

  “Ugh,” said Mrs. Tinker. “That Mr. Lemoncello fellow is so incredibly irksome. So is that Russian gal, Dr. Zinfadelski.”

  “I’m so very confused,” said Mrs. Brewster. “Why on earth would a library need a director of holographic imagery?”