Family Book Club: Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library

We recently finished reading Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein for our family book club. It is a very cute book that is basically a mash up of Night at the Museum with Willy Wonka (Mr. Lemoncello) and fun codes throughout the book. It makes the Dewey Decimal system seem fun! The authors website is a treasure trove of ideas for activities to go along with the book and I used several resources from that site for our book club. In the book, all the 12 year olds in the school are supposed to write an extra credit essay about why they want to visit the new library for the lock in party. Kyle, the main character, forgets so he writes his essay on the bus on the way to school the morning it is due. He simply writes, "Because there might be balloons." So of course we had to have balloons for our party! I had put a question about the book and a rebus (picture clue like the ones in the book. They were already pre-made by the author and are included in the bonus material of the book and on the author's website) inside each balloon. The kids had to sit on the balloons to pop them, answer the question, and solve the rebus. After all 12 balloons were popped we put all our rebus pictures in order and solved the rebus puzzle which led to another puzzle. The second puzzle was one where you had to write down the first letter in each chapter of the book and it spelled out a few sentences.

In the book they have Anagram cookies which are basically letter shaped cookies that you spell out a word and eat together. For example, BB & Q would taste like barbeque. I didn't have any anagram cookies so I bought Alpha Bits cereal. Then I gave the kids 6 minutes to spell out as many words as they could using the letters in the cereal. They were really concentrating and ended up getting some great words!

Mr. Lemoncello is a famous board game designer and board games are talked about repeatedly throughout the book so of course we had to play a game. Technically Yahtzee is not a board game but is one we often play together and can accommodate 6 players. We also had snacks, chocolate covered pretzels and rootbeer, while we played.

This was a fun book. Not a literary masterpiece or one with a great teaching moral but the clues and puzzles were really fun. It really had the kids thinking trying to figure out the riddles. And it secretly teaches them a lot about how libraries are organized and the importance of reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction. There's also a great reading list in the bonus materials. Now we are moving on to the third book in the Heroes Guide series, The Heroes Guide to Being an Outlaw. They are very fun books and I have some great voices I use for each of the characters! I'm excited to see what is happening with the League of Princes!