Chris Grabenstein’s Mr Lemoncello’s All-Star Breakout Game is a puzzle packed romp for 8 year olds about a boy who cannot leave a game alone.<\/p>\n
Kyle Keeley is in the school library during independent reading, playing a brand new optical illusion game on a library computer, at volume, with three friends who all know better.<\/p>\n
Is it a vase or two faces? Is it a saxophone player or a woman? The ten second timer is running down and nobody can agree.<\/p>\n
Then the librarian appears, and behind her is Charles Chiltington, who has been reading The Red Badge of Courage and would very much like the room to know it.<\/p>\n
Charles is a glorious villain. He compliments the librarian’s home knitted waistcoat, suggests the correct number of detentions, then argues the number upwards. Kyle takes the blame for all four of them and walks out with five.<\/p>\n
The game maker is Luigi L. Lemoncello, and he is about to announce a television show. Real children moved around inside a three dimensional breakout game, like counters on a board.<\/p>\n
The word play is relentless. Congratulicitations. Awesometastic. Hell-o, it’s a Lemon-cell-o. Your reader will be saying that last one for a week, sorry.<\/p>\n
It is also a book about books, which I always like. The friends are library aides and book scavengers, and it is Sierra who quotes Atticus Finch at the lunch table to argue that Charles must have some reason for being the way he is.<\/p>\n
She turns out to be onto something. You get a couple of scenes inside the Chiltington house, where the cook’s hands shake when Charles looks at the biscuits and his mother agrees with everything he says.<\/p>\n
That is a nice thing to find in a book this daft. The bully is horrible and the book still shows you the room he goes home to.<\/p>\n
This is not the first book about Mr Lemoncello. Kyle looks back on an escape game inside the library and on something called the Library Olympics, and those earlier books are not here yet, which is a pity. It stands alone perfectly well, mind. Kyle explains who everybody is, and the puzzles need no run up at all.<\/p>\n
The chapters are short and end on a hook, which is exactly right for a reader who says one more and means it.<\/p>\n
If your reader is the sort who shouts the answer at the page, they will have a lovely time with this.<\/p>\n
For another game that leaps off the page into a real city, there is The Unbreakable Code. Emily and James chase coded messages hidden inside Mark Twain books across San Francisco, and it is a good deal tenser, because every book they find is followed by a fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chris Grabenstein’s Mr Lemoncello’s All-Star Breakout Game is a puzzle packed romp for 8 year olds about a boy who cannot leave a game alone. Kyle Keeley is in the school library during independent reading, playing a brand new optical illusion game on a library computer, at volume, with three friends who all know better. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11519,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":6979,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Unbreakable Code","lr_seo_hook":"A game maker puts real children inside a three dimensional breakout game."},"book_tag":[22],"age_group":[26],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[190],"class_list":["post-8148","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-mystery-books","age_group-books-for-8-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-chris-grabenstein"],"yoast_title":"Mr. Lemoncello’s All-Star Breakout Game by Chris Grabenstein | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A game maker puts real children inside a three dimensional breakout game. For ages 8+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n