Hi everyone, this first post features an adventure series like no other!! If you have a young bibliophile at home who does nothing but read all day, get them to check out this series!! Filled with puzzles, mystery, adventure, libraries, literature,…oops…too much already!! Just give it whirl, see if they like it!!
Series: The Lemoncello Library series
Author: Chris Grabenstein
Genre: Fiction – contemporary
Publication details: Random House; NY; 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019 & 2020.
What these books are about: Join twelve-year-old Kyle Keely and his friends in this fantastical series of books as they solve puzzles and brain teasers, crack codes and figure out mind-boggling literary challenges!! The Lemoncello Library series will have bibliomaniacs trembling with excitement as each installment brings mystery, literature, imagination and invention to life amidst the chapters of this bestselling and award-winning books!
My review: What an awesome set of books!! Chris Grabenstein managed to tick all the boxes when it came to this fascinating series for me!! Bibliomaniacs watch out, these books are filled with Dewey challenges, author quizzes, fun research games, book cart races, puzzles and everything else you love to do with your library!! Kyle and his friends are an amazing bunch of kids!! Some are really well read and ace through the challenges while others… well… let’s just say some stiff competition does help bring the best in people, especially when teamwork is involved!! This action-packed literary adventure series is perfect for those like me who can’t put down reads like these!! I like how each story layers over important issues such as censorship and the value of literacy!! I believe that this is, by far, one of the best Chris Grabenstein has produced!! Awesome read for tweens and teens alike!! At the end of his fourth book, Mr Lemoncello’s All Star Breakout Game, Grabenstein has included some notes that are truly insightful and inspiring!!
My rating: 5 ⭐
Additional information: Escape from Lemoncello’s Library is an award-winning title!! It has won the Agatha Award for Best Children’s and Young Adult Novel in 2013, the Garden State Book Award and the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award in 2015, among a vast list of other awards and nominations!! I seriously lost count!!
Best quote from excerpt in author notes from Book Four:
“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be read or imagined, familiar or strange. Those windows are also sliding doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or re-created by the author… A window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.”
Rudine, Sims Bishop, “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors,” Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom Vol 6. No. 3 (Summer 1990)
Miss Mahee's Library of Reads 