Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein

jamming with Metallica.
    Finally, around three in the morning, Clarence and his twin brother, Clement, came to escort the kids to their sleeping quarters. The boys would roll out their sleeping bags in the Children’s Room, just off the rotunda; the girls would be upstairs on the third floor in the Board Room. Charles Chiltington would be luxuriating all alone in Mr. Lemoncello’s private suite.
    Exhausted from the excitement of the day—and crashing after eating way too much sugar—Kyle slept like a baby.
    He only woke up because he heard music.
    Loud, blaring music.
    The theme song from that boxing movie
Rocky
, his brother Mike’s favorite.
    “Whazzat?” he mumbled, crawling out of his sleeping bag.
    Kyle glanced at his watch. It was eleven a.m. He figured the library lock-in was officially over and this was the group’s wake-up call.
    The music kept blaring.
    “This is how they wake up astronauts,” groaned Miguel.
    “Turn it off!” moaned Andrew Peckleman.
    Kyle slipped on his jeans and sneakers and staggered out into the giant reading room.
    “Dr. Zinchenko?”
    His voice echoed off the dome. No answer.
    “Clarence? Clement?”
    Nothing.
    The
Rocky
music got louder.
    Akimi leaned in from the third-floor balcony.
    “What’s going on down there?”
    “I think they’re trying to wake up astronauts,” said Kyle. “On the moon.”
    He made his way to the front door and reached for the handle.
    It wouldn’t budge.
    He jiggled it.
    Nothing.
    He jiggled harder.
    Still nothing.
    Kyle realized that the library lock-in might be over but they were still locked in the library.

“Everybody, please take your seats,” Dr. Zinchenko said to the parents gathered in a conference room at the Parker House Hotel.
    “When do our kids come home?” asked one of the mothers.
    “Rose has soccer at two,” said another.
    The librarian nodded. “Mr. Lemoncello will—”
    Just then, an accordion-panel door at the far end of the room flew open, revealing the eccentric billionaire dressed in a bright purple tracksuit and a plumed pirate hat. He was eating a slice of seven-layer birthday cake.
    “Good morning or, as they’re currently saying in Reykjavik,
gott síodegi
, which means ‘good afternoon,’ because there is a four-hour time difference between Ohio and Iceland, a fact I first learned spinning a globe in my local library.”
    Mr. Lemoncello, his banana shoes burp-squeaking, stepped out of a room filled with dozens of black-and-white television monitors—the kind security guards watch at their workstations.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on this grand and auspicious day. Today I am pleased to announce the most marvelously stupendous game ever created: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library! The entire library will be the game board. Your children will be the game pieces. The winner will become famous all over the world.”
    “How?” asked one of the fathers.
    “By starring in all of my commercials this holiday season. TV. Radio. Print. Billboards. Cardboard cutouts in toy stores. His or her face will be everywhere.”
    Mrs. Daley raised her hand. “Will they get paid?”
    “Oh, yes. In fact, you’ll probably want to call me The Giver.”
    “And what exactly does Haley have to do to win?”
    “Escape! From the library. I thought the game’s title more or less gave that bit away.” Mr. Lemoncello tapped a button in his pirate hat and an animated version of the library’s floor plan was instantly displayed on the conference room’s plasma-screen TVs.
    “Whoever is the first to use what they find
in
the library to find their way
out
of the library will be crowned the winner. Now then, the children cannot use the front door or the fire exits or set off any alarms. They cannot go out the way they went in. They can only use their wits, cunning,and intelligence to decipher clues and solve riddles that will eventually lead them to the location of the library’s super-secret alternate