Mr. Lemoncello and the Titanium Ticket | Grabenstein, Chris

Lange Beschreibung
Can you find your way out of what James Patterson calls the 'coolest library in the world'? For the first time, you are invited INSIDE Mr. Lemoncello's one-of-a-kind Gameworks Factory!

From the coauthor of I Funny and Max Einstein--and with 100+ weeks on the New York Times bestseller list--the LEMONCELLO books are laugh-out-loud, puzzle-packed MUST-READS for homes and classrooms across America.

Far away from his magical library, everyone's favorite game maker, Luigi Lemoncello, is building something new. Something SECRET. And he's about to let the world see it. Four lucky kids will win the chance to go inside the new Lemoncello-tastic building on a scavenger hunt that will take them through live-action challenges--skyscraper-size Jenga, dizzying real-life Chutes and Ladders, death-defying games of Rush Hour, and more! Each game will get the players closer to the titanium ticket. And only then will the real secret be revealed. . . .

Don't miss the bonus puzzle in the back! Look for the rest of the puzzle-packed series--Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library, Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics, Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race, and Mr. Lemoncello's All-Star Breakout Game!

PRAISE FOR THE SERIES:
44 STATE AWARD LISTS AND COUNTING
100+ WEEKS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST
* 'A worthy successor to the original madman puzzle-master himself, Willy Wonka.' --Booklist, starred review

Rezensierung
PRAISE FOR THE SERIES:

A New York Times bestselling series
 
'Discover the coolest library in the world.' James Patterson
 
'Lots of action and quirky humor.' The Washington Post
 
* 'A worthy successor to the original madman puzzle-master himself, Willy Wonka.' Booklist, starred review
 
* 'A winner for readers and game-players alike.' Kirkus Reviews, starred review
 
* 'A fun-filled, suspenseful intellectual puzzle.' Shelf Awareness, starred review
 
'Will have readers racing to pick up the next volume.' School Library Journal

Buchausschnitt

1

It was after nine o clock on a school night. 

Simon Skrindle, a short (and nearly invisible) seventh grader at Hudson Hills Middle School, had just crept out of the dark forest near the Lemoncello Gameworks Factory. 

He was a twelve-year-old on a mission. 

He was alone. Simon didn t have many friends, especially not the kind who d go on an adventure with him, sneaking through the woods late at night. 

And this was a BIG adventure. 

Simon was going to be the first to see what secrets were hidden inside the new building behind Mr. Lemoncello s factory! 

For twenty-five years, Luigi L. Lemoncello, the world-famous game maker, had manufactured his games inside the fantastical castle fortress of the Lemoncello Gameworks--a sprawling factory perched high on a hilltop overlooking the Hudson River. Its four corner towers looked like upside-down snow cones made out of lemon-yellow oval bricks. The pinnacles at their pointy tips were topped with cello weather vanes. Sculptures of game pieces served as gargoyles. The factory s water tower was a one-million-gallon lemon on stilts. During the day, enormous smokestacks puffed out billowy clouds of steam in the shapes of animals or famous faces. Simon loved seeing the Abraham Lincoln and George Washington clouds drifting across the sky over the factory every Presidents Day. And the bunnies at Easter time. People came from all over to take selfies with the cartoon clouds. Another pipe let out enormous rainbow-colored bubbles every weekend. 

There was also a giant ball-pit moat surrounding the whole factory and you could only enter when the drawbridge was lowered. Workers had to know the secret password and shout it into an enormous curled horn that looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. 

And for the past five years, Mr. Lemoncello had spent a ton of money and time constructing a top-secret new building close to his factory fortress. All the work had been done behind forty-foot-tall plywood walls (painted yellow, of course). The workers and contractors and architects had been sworn to secrecy about what they were doing on the other side of that wooden barricade. 

Rumors buzzed around the town, anyway. 

One guy at school, Jack McClintock, whose dad was the head of security at the Gameworks Factory, said the new building was nothing but a fancy warehouse for storing junk. A girl in Simon s science class, Soraiya Mitchell, whose father was the plant manager, said the new building would be filled with amazing twenty-second-century game-making technology.  

Basically, nobody knew what was inside the new building. But everybody wanted to find out. Kids at school were even daring each other to bust in.  

No one had the nerve to try. 

Then, two weeks ago, the yellow plywood walls came down to reveal a modern, three-story silver box with mirrored walls. At night, those walls reflected back the twinkling black sky. 

Plywood down, the secret glass building was now surrounded by three rings of chain-link fences, set up in concentric circles. Each fence had a locked gate, which could be reached by following a footpath from the factory parking lot past a bed of yellow and orange flowers spelling out the word gesundheit, then on through rows of topiary--evergreen shrubs trimmed to resemble Mr. Lemoncello in various poses (juggling, dancing, tipping an egg timer, balancing a pair of giant dice on his nose). Some kids at school said the fences were electrified, too. 

Security for the new building was tight. Super tight. 

Simon s grandfather, who hated all things Lemoncello, swore that the batty old bazillionaire is installing an army of robots in that new building so he can fire all the factory workers! &