Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics

Puzzles and games appear constantly in Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics. This motif adds to the book’s playful tone and supports its contentions about The Joy of Intellectual Challenges. Kyle and his friends have the pleasure of appearing in Lemoncello’s wacky commercials because they are the winners of a contest involving several different mental challenges—and these commercials themselves are for games that present players with similar challenges. All these games are also meant to be entertaining, silly fun. The board and video games Mr. Lemoncello creates have a dual purpose: They are meant to make players laugh while conveying important information about the world. The bulk of the story’s action involves the Library Olympics, where games like book cart relay races and paper airplane flying challenges combine fun with a mental workout. Kyle and the other competitors learn new facts about dinosaurs, aeronautical engineering, and history, among other things, while still managing to have a great deal of fun completing Mr. Lemoncello’s challenges.

It is not only the story’s characters who get to enjoy puzzles and games; the reader, too, is challenged to solve several puzzles throughout the text. As a mystery, the story itself functions as a kind of puzzle, challenging readers to put together clues from narrative elements like characterization and foreshadowing to work out what is really happening. The text also includes the riddles and rebuses the characters are tasked with solving so that the reader can participate in solving these puzzles. Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics itself functions like one of Mr. Lemoncello’s games: It offers the reader a mental workout and conveys information about the world in a lighthearted, silly way, illustrating how much fun intellectual challenges can be.

The novel’s motif of technological innovation celebrates the power of technology to advance learning and enhance the library experience by making it more accessible and entertaining. Mr. Lemoncello has invented many new technologies for use in his library: hover ladders, smell-a-vision, and the Gesticulatron Motion Detector are among these inventions. He also makes novel use of existing technologies. Animatronic and holographic figures make announcements, guide research, and offer information to library visitors. The Wonder Dome displays constantly updated videos relevant to what is happening in the library. Patrons can use the video games in the Electronic Learning Center to learn about different animals, historical periods, oceans, and other topics.

Lemoncello’s reliance on technology is a point of contention between him and the novel’s various antagonists. Susana, Charles, and Marjory all strongly disagree with the library’s use of technology, feeling that it is, as Susana puts it, “Too much sizzle, not enough steak” (6). They feel that the electronic gizmos in the library detract from the seriousness and calm that should pervade a library and use up resources that should be spent on things like books. This echoes the current debate about the uses of public libraries in the real world—some people feel libraries should do more to teach digital literacy and help the public access electronic resources, and others feel they should stick to traditional purposes like circulating books. Since Kyle—the likable protagonist of Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics—enthusiastically embraces technology, and the book’s plot demonstrates how this technology can be used to promote learning, it is clear that the novel sides with those who advocate more technology in today’s public libraries.