Garden City Library Book Review

  
By Kathryn Warner

 Two new books by the author Chris Grabenstein have recently arrived. He is a New York author, who started writing ads for the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Company. He was the Executive Vice President and Group Creative Director at Young & Rubicon when he retired. He has written screen plays and scripts for Jim Henson’s Muppets. He has been on the New York Times Best Sellers list as well as achieving the Anthony Award for Tilt A Whirl in the Adult Creepack Mysteries. His Haunted Mysteries series for children has received the Agatha and Anthony Awards. He writes both adult and children’s fiction. These novels are for Middle grade readers.

In his Agatha Award winning book: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, a twelve year old boy named Kyle Keeley wants to win the contest where only twelve, twelve year olds can enter. Mr. Lemoncello is a game maker who has modernized the town’s library. On opening night only twelve, twelve years olds will be able to go into the library. They must play the game and figure out how to get out of the library in order to win the prize.  The prize is a chance to be in all of his ads and a five-hundred dollar gift certificate for Mr. Lemoncello’s games and products.

The children entered and saw this quote; “Knowledge not shared remains unknown-Luigi L. Lemoncello.”  Each twelve year old had to solve all kind of riddles and puzzles in order to find their way out of the library. The only way they could do this was to know the Dewey Decimal System in order to find the books with the clues inside. Here is a list of the books they had to find. Do you know where to find them in a library?

·        Incident at Hawk’s Hill by Allan W. Eckert

·        One Fish Two Fish Red fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss

·        Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume

·        The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Synder

·        Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

·        The Wresting Game by Ellen Ruskin

·        Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Vern

·        The Yak Who Yelled Yuck by Carol Pugliano-Martin

·        No David by David Shannon

·        Olivia by Ian Falconer

·        Unreal by Paul Jennings

·        Scat by Earl Hiaasen

·        All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor

·        Anna and the Infinite Power by Mildred Ames

·        Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

·        I Love You, Stinky Face by Lisa McCourt

·        The Napping House by Audrey Wood

·        Six Days of the Condor by James Grady

·        Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott

·        Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm

·        A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Find out what these letters mean: INDNSETHTTATOUTAASAW??IT. Find out if once the contestants shared their knowledge who became the winner of the game.

In Chris Grabenstein’s book, The Island of Dr. Libris, Billy has a riddle to solve. Dr. Libris’s home is close by. His bookcase has special books, where characters come alive on Dr. Libris Island. Could Dr. Libris experiments with theta waves have anything to do with it? What does it have to do with Billy?

Can you imagine Hercules in tights and a tight tunic part of Robin Hood’s Merry Men? How did Tom Sawyer help Billy?  Pollyanna just wanted to have a picnic and play the glad game. The more books he opened the more mixed up the characters became with the Sheriff of Nottingham after them all.

Chris Grabenstein used the books he read as a child to write these witty, humorous books with a few puns mixed in. The books found on Chris’s book shelves were:

·        The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells

·        The Wonderful Wizard of Oz  by L. Frank Baum

·        The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carls Collodi

·        A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

·        The Labors of Hercules by Peisander

·        The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein

·        Moby Dick (or The Whale) by Herman Melville

·        The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

·        The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor (part of the Arabian Nights)

·        The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Great Renown in Nottinghamshire by Howard Pyle

·        “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” (Norwegian folk tale)

·        Aesop’s Tales by Aesop

·        Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

·        The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

·        Aladdin (part of the Arabian Nights)

·        The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

·        20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

·        Pollyanna, The Glad Book by Eleanor H. Porter

·        The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas Auguste Maquet

·        The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

·        Holes by Louis Sachar

·        Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

·        Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Vern

·        The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

·        “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edger Allen Poe

·        “Jack and the Beanstalk” (traditional English folk tale)

·        Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers

·        Le Morte d’Arthur Sir Thomas Maloy

·        Glenda of Oz by Harper Lee

·        To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

How many books have you or your children read? How many of these books does our library have? If you get the number right you win a prize at the library.