Emily's Musings

Chasing Vermeer

Finished Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett (Scholastic Press, New York: 2004) last night and absolutely loved it. Its a wonderful mystery/adventure starring two smart sixth graders and is filled with art, puzzles, codes, secret hiding places and all sorts of other exciting things. Its gotten quite a bit of hype (calling it the The DaVinci Code for kids) and I've been meaning to check it out for a while now (finally broke down and bought it).

Publisher's Weekly writes, "Puzzles nest within puzzles in this ingeniously plotted and lightly delivered first novel that, revolving around the heist of a Vermeer painting, also touches on the nature of coincidence, truth, art and similarly meaty topics." And "The art mystery and the crisp intelligence of the prose immediately recall E.L. Konigsburg, but Balliett is an original: her protagonists also receive clues through dreams, pentominoes (math tools with alphabetic correspondences), secret codes (including some left to readers to decipher) and other deliberately non-rational devices... Thick with devilish red herrings, this smart, playful story never stops challenging (and exhilarating) the audience." The Amazon description adds, "In the classic tradition of E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, debut author Blue Balliett introduces readers to another pair of precocious kids on an artful quest full of patterns, puzzles, and the power of blue M&Ms." What could be better than that?

Ages 8-12 (but that shouldn't stop you from enjoing it too)