LI kids chat with Breanna Yde of ‘Mr. Lemoncello’s Library’

Last week our entire class was able to preview the new Nickelodeon movie, “Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library,” which is based on the book by author Chris Grabenstein. The movie stars actress Breanna Yde as Akimi, a sixth-grader. This exciting adventure takes viewers on a journey through various literary works.

In the movie, Mr. Luigi Lemoncello (played by Russell Roberts) creates an essay contest for the students to preview his interactive library and go on a quest. They are tasked with finding clues in order to earn their freedom from the library. Each student has a library card that grants access to each genre and an escape button, if needed. The clues require the students to interact with a different characters from classic books. For example, one of the students had to put Humpty Dumpty back together again in order to earn the next step toward winning the game. Breanna’s character, Akimi, proves to be smart on her feet when challenged by a clever troll. She is also fearless while using the “hover cover.” This is a hard-covered book that allows her to fly. Her strong will and determination prove to be an asset to her team. Competition between the kids evolves into teamwork and friendship. Together, they face challenges and try to escape.

We highly recommend this entertaining movie for all ages. Breanna and her co-stars were exceptional and worth watching. We know you will enjoy it as much as we do. We rate it 4.5 smiles (out of five). It airs Monday at 7 p.m. on Nickelodeon.

After seeing the movie with our classmates we were able to travel into Manhattan to the Sugar Factory on Oct. 2 to meet with Breanna and talk to her about the movie.

We wanted to know how long it takes her to learn her lines for a film. Breanna said, “Usually about a day or two because we have to rehearse it and then do it for all the executives and they might change up the script a little bit.”

Breanna is paired with a troll in the film, which was done with CGI (computer-generated imagery). We asked if that made her acting job easier or harder. She said, “It was interesting working with all the CGI equipment. For the troll they had, like, this fuzzy bear so it was kind of hard to be scared of it. Sometimes we would just look into nothing when we didn’t use the bear. There was a dragon in another scene that was supposed to be chasing us and there was nothing there so we had to look up and pretend that it was there.”

We noticed in the movie that Breanna’s character did a lot of stunts. We asked her if she did them herself or if she had a stunt double. Breanna said, “I think I performed every stunt in the movie! Sometimes the stunts were really difficult but most of the time it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun doing them.”