Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race: Chapters 11–23

“Cheerio and greetings to you all!” Mr. Lemoncello decreed from his lofty perch.

Research requires due diligence and proper perseverance.

“We have our first team of data diggers! Since there will be only five new exhibits, there are only four slots remaining! Work your clues, super sleuths! Work them with voracious rapidity!”

“We need to go downstairs and pick up our second clue and come up with a logical correlation.”
“A what?”
“A real reason the clues go together!”

Overhead, the Wonder Dome was filled with floating images of the first five Famous Foursomes: the suits of cards, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the yellow-brick-road travelers from The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion), the four sides of a ship (bow, stern, starboard, port), and, of course, the Houses of Hogwarts (Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Slytherin).

“...will find airplane tickets and travel vouchers waiting for you in your rooms at Mr. Lemoncello’s guest chalets. Unless, like Mr. Keeley and Miss Hughes, you live here in Ohio. Then you will just go home with lovely parting gifts.”

She insists that a sixth name be added to the list of new exhibits. Not only that, but her mother concurs.

Said we needed an interactive hologram of me. One that patrons could pepper with pertinent questions.

Mr. Lemoncello, flanked by the security guards Clarence and Clement, stood in the center of the rotunda, waiting.

Because as an icebreaker to help you new teammates learn to work together, we will play a quick picture puzzler.

It’s a rebus. I play Mr. Lemoncello’s Amazingly Baffling Picture Puzzlers all the time!

Abia studied the images projected on the ceiling. Reread Kyle’s answer. Nodded grudgingly.

“What do they all have in common?” mused Abia.

Once in the lobby, Kyle saw a bright yellow lemon decal plastered to the floor.

“Since Abia and Kyle solved the Galileo rebus first, they get to go first. The other five teams will follow at ten-second intervals, based on the order you answered the icebreaker.”

She definitely knew how to hail a ride.

“You ready to roll, kids?” asked the driver, a college-aged girl named Jessica, according to the embroidery on her polo shirt.

We have lost our slight and insignificant lead.

The theater marquee outside the art deco Cinemark movie theater in downtown Alexandriaville listed six different movie titles.

Kyle noticed that she was wearing a little lemon-and-cello lapel pin.

A tiny square of cardboard shot out of a metal slot in the ticket counter. The lady tore it off at its perforations and slid it through the half-moon window.

He and Abia went over to a tall table near the concession stand and studied their clue.

All five of them wore the telltale lemon-and-cello lapel pins.

The two of them chased after the broom man, who had finally corralled the last pesky piece of popcorn.

“Funny,” said Frederick. “It seems Luigi did exactly the same thing.”
The two brothers tittered.

“We wanted to see your new library,” said David, his eyelid twitching. “It truly is marvelous. So generous of you to give up your valuable game-designing time for such a noble cause.”

“Your holiday line will be a complete and utter failure!”

All of a sudden Michael Jordan, wearing his Chicago Bulls uniform, strolled across the marble floor, casually dribbling a basketball.

As the lumbering bookmobile raced across town, Kyle and Abia sat in the back doing their independent research projects.

The first silent movie, produced in 1903, was Thomas Edison’s The Great Train Robbery. Plot’s pretty basic. Four bandits rob a train. Posse chases them.

“Okay, it took like half an hour just to read the title!” said Kyle, who was totally exasperated with his partner.

He was in a very competitive race, where he borrowed—some said stole—ideas from other inventors who were also working on an incandescent bulb.

Two had “Dwell in Possibility” written in frilly script letters.

He was dressed like a big bird. Not the Big Bird—some kind of Dr. Seuss creature with gangly legs, an odd beak, and two weird tail feathers.

He preened and yawned and looked at his watch like he was bored.

“Whoa, hold up there, kids,” said a burly security guard, raising her hand and blocking the gate in a chain-link fence topped with coils of barbed wire.

She gestured toward the bulkhead wall.

Kyle and Abia sniffed the delicious scents wafting through the cabin and followed the aroma into the galley, where a chef in a tall paper hat was pulling fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies out of an oven.

Kyle and Abia plopped into their plush recliners and strapped on their seat belts.

“We make quite a formidable team.”