Gamification and Great Mysteries, a guest post by Amy Brownlee

Gamification and great mystery stories are two elements effective at engaging and inspiring young readers. In our libraries, we’ve had success with a variety of events over the years, including a library scavenger hunt, rebus puzzles, library Olympic games, and a murder mystery dinner. 

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library is an interactive mystery story that invites readers to solve puzzles right along with the book’s characters. I’ve used this title for an after-school book club and for 5th- and 6th-grade literature circles, and it never fails to engage students.

The book is filled with humor, adventure, and puzzles. It has won 21 statewide reader’s choice awards, including the William Allen White Children’s Book Award in my home state of Kansas. I was able to attend the awards ceremony the year Grabenstein won and got to meet him and get books autographed for our library.

Best of all, this is the first book in the Mr. Lemoncello’s Library six-book series by Chris Grabenstein, so once students are hooked, they read the whole series. 

Rebus / pictogram puzzles

Rebus or pictogram (picture-based) puzzles are an important aspect of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library. In our lit circles class, I started several class periods with a rebus puzzle and challenged students to solve it. Here are some free rebus resources:

• Interactive rebus puzzles
• Free printable rebus puzzles 
• More printable puzzles

The first time I taught the book, I was very surprised that most of the students didn’t pause to work on the puzzles throughout the story. They were missing out on the fun!  I reserved class time and made sure to have students pause and work on each puzzle when it was presented in the book. I love how the author built in a natural tool for engaging readers.

Through the author’s website, Grabenstein shares a hands-on scavenger hunt you can host for students in your library. All the instructions and printable clues are provided for free. I’ve done this several times with groups of students and it’s always a big hit. 

Library Olympics

The second book in the series is Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics. Grabenstein provides a video and activity kit with some Library Olympics activities on his website which we did during an after-school book club. I also came up with my own Olympic activities that I have used as “just for fun” activities during an Olympic-themed reading celebration week at my elementary school.

Our Library Olympics relay race events included: book cart relay, hop to the wall and back with a book in different places (on your head, between your knees, held behind your back), and toss a magazine into a basket. 

Murder mystery dinner

Years ago I did a murder mystery dinner with my 7^th– and 8^th-grade book club. Students had the choice of several different mystery books which we read and discussed. As a culminating activity, I purchased a middle-school appropriate murder mystery script. A grant funded the purchase of our mystery books, the script, and food for the dinner. Our Family and Consumer Sciences teacher allowed us to use her classroom and kitchen for the event, and parent volunteers shopped for groceries, cooked, and served the food. 

The murder mystery was set on a cruise ship, and each participant was given a script with a character name, description and instructions.  We followed the script and everyone enjoyed the meal and was engrossed in finding the killer. It was a super fun way to celebrate our mystery book club.

Breakout EDU

Breakouts are educational activities where students follow clues to unlock a variety of different types of locks to unlock a box and solve a problem or answer a question. Breakout EDU is a teacher-created company that sells kits that include two boxes and several types of locks: number locks, letter locks, directional locks, color locks, and padlocks. Subscribing to their platform gives you access to printable breakout activities that include all the necessary instructions and materials to run a breakout. These activities are highly engaging and can be adapted for different ages, abilities, and topics. 

If you live in Kansas, the Kansas Corn organization will provide three free Breakout EDU kits to your school for hosting a one-hour professional development session from a Kansas Corn representative. We earned six free kits for our district libraries, and the PD program facilitator and session were excellent. Learn more about this program at the Kansas Corn website.

There are also digital breakouts where the puzzles are solved and lock combinations are decoded digitally. They are available through the Breakout EDU platform or can be created on your own using Google Forms. 

This type of gamification builds on the popularity of escape rooms and are highly motivating for students of all ages.

More middle grade mysteries:

• The Mystery of Locked Rooms by Lindsay Currie will be published April 2, 2024, and is based on the idea of a fun house full of escape rooms. It would pair perfectly with a Breakout EDU activity.
• The World-Famous Nine by Ben Guterson is set in a huge, multilevel department store and feels like a Willy Wonka adventure with messages to decode.  
• Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett is a mystery about art, unexplained occurrences, and friendship. As an added bonus, Brett Helquist’s illustrations include a hidden message for readers to solve. Pentominoes also feature prominently in the story. I printed a set of pentominoes on cardstock for each student in my lit circle and they were completely engaged in the challenge of building rectangles with the Tetris-like pieces. Access your own free printable pentominoes here.
• The Wright Three by Blue Balliett focuses on the Robie House, a Prairie style masterpiece designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This book, a sequel to Chasing Vermeer that can also stand alone, also includes hidden message illustrations by Helquist and focuses on the Fibonacci sequence.
• The Book Scavenger series by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman features a game where books are hidden in public spaces around the city with puzzles to solve that reveal clues to the books’ locations.
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart is also a streaming series on Disney+. Children are tested and selected for secret missions based on their talent and ability to think outside the box to solve problems.
• The Mr. Lemoncello’s Library series by Chris Grabenstein includes six books in all. Book one also has a movie on Netflix and has been published in graphic novel format.
• 39 Clues is a series by various authors. Book 1 is Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan. The books feature a clue hunt that leads participants all around the world. I love that this adventure story is set in real places and includes riddles that feature different famous people from history. We’ve had a resurgence in the popularity of this series partly because I visited the Paris catacombs last summer (one of the settings in Maze of Bones) and shared photos with students, who were fascinated.
• The Greenglass House series by Kate Milford has five volumes. The first book is a “cozy” mystery set at Greenglass House, an old smuggler’s inn set on high, seaside cliffs. During a snowstorm, unexpected guests arrive and things get interesting as items go missing and connections among guests are revealed.
• Premeditated Myrtle by Elizabeth C. Bunce (Myrtle Hardcastle series, book 1) is about a bright, precocious girl who uses science to investigate and solve crimes in Victorian England. Full disclosure: I love this whole series but haven’t yet found many students as enthusiastic about it as I am. It’s humorous, scientific, and wholly entertaining. The audiobooks are utterly delightful.

Solution to the rebus puzzle: Have a wonderful summer and read lots of books.

Amy Brownlee is a book lover, presenter, and preK-12 teacher-librarian at a small school district in rural Kansas. She blogs at BiblioBrownlee.weebly.com and is on Instagram and X/Twitter @amybrownlee93. Learn more about her work at about.me/amybrownlee.

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