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Children 'escape' from Hinsdale Library

Librarians at the Hinsdale Library created a Harry Potter-themed escape room for middle school-age students.

Three groups of children escaped from the Hinsdale Library Friday afternoon. That is three of the six teams that participated in the Teen Escape Room, followed the clues and solved the puzzles.

Youth services librarian Patty Lawley and assistant teen librarian Allison Riggs designed the escape room with a Harry Potter theme.

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Using tables and accessories from their own homes and the offices of their co-workers, they converted the storytime room in the library's lower level to the office of Professor Severus Snape, a wizard and potion master at Hogwarts. There were skulls, old books, candles, bottles of different colored potions and yellowed drawings.

One by one, teams of three to five middle school students took their turn in the escape room.

"You have been sneaking into Snape's office when the door closes and you are locked in," Lawley said to set the scene for each of them. "You have 15 minutes to find the key out."

Brandishing a flashlight, she told them, "This is your wand."

The key was hidden in a small suitcase that was locked with four padlocks. Each padlock used a different series of numbers, colors or letters to open.

The children started with their heads bent over a riddle that involved Bertie Bott Beans. Most worked quietly and diligently.

Lawley and Riggs periodically offered clues, such as "think skulls," or encouragement, suggesting the players split up and not all work on the same puzzle.

The team of Leah Bradley, 13, and Juliana Norman, 12, both from Hinsdale, and Sarah Kitley, 12, and Katelyn Ulrich, 13, both from Clarendon Hills, solved all the riddles and found the key with just one minute to spare.

"It was really well put together," Juliana said.

The girls, who know each other from Clarendon Hills Middle School, have done other escape rooms before in La Grange, Schaumburg and elsewhere.

Sarah liked that the escape had to be done in 15 minutes. The other ones she has been at took an hour to 90 minutes, she said.

The girls liked how the librarians set the scene and gave them a reason they were trapped and had to get out.

"It was like you were stepping straight into a mystery," Leah said.

"It was really adventurous," Katelyn said. "It wasn't too advanced, but you had to think about it. It was good for a group of four."

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Sarah said she spent nearly the whole 15 minutes decoding the numbers and letters in the first puzzle. By the time, she had finished that, her friends had figured out everything else, she said.

"I figured out one thing and I am happy about that," said Hemani Patel, 11, of Hinsdale, who was on a different team with Angela Guo, 11, of Burr Ridge and Samiksha Gupta, 11, of Hinsdale.

Nikolas Theotikos, 11, Sloan Newlin, 12 and Kiran Gitzlaff, 12, all of Hinsdale, solved the puzzles and found the key with 3 minutes and 48 seconds to spare, the fastest time of any team.

They had done an escape room in fifth grade during a field trip.

"We can work well together if we want to," Nikolas said.

The librarians set up the escape room with the help of a kit from Breakout Edu, a learning games platform, then wrote their own clues.

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