Chasing Vermeer (2004)

Chasing Vermeer is a 2004 children's art mystery novel written by Blue Balliett and illustrated by Brett Helquist. Set in Hyde Park, Chicago near the University of Chicago, the novel follows two children, Calder Pillay and Petra Andalee. After a famous Johannes Vermeer painting, A Lady Writing, is stolen en route to the Art Institute of Chicago, Calder and Petra work together to try to recover it. The thief publishes many advertisements in the newspaper, explaining that he will give the painting back if the community can discover which paintings under Vermeer's name were really painted by him. This causes Petra, Calder, and the rest of Hyde Park to examine art more closely. Themes of art, chance, coincidence, deception, and problem-solving are apparent.

The novel was written for Balliett's classroom intended to deal with real-world issues. Balliett values children's ideas and wrote the book specifically to highlight that. Chasing Vermeer has won several awards, including the Edgar and the Agatha. In 2006, the sequel entitled The Wright 3 was published, followed by The Calder Game in 2008.

Inspiration and origin

Chasing Vermeer is Blue Balliett's first published book. Its original purpose was a book to read to her class for fun. She realized that a mystery about "real" art issues had not been written since E.L. Konigsburg's 1967 novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and desired to write what she wished to read. Chasing Vermeer took about five years to write, as Balliett was also a teacher and parent. She compared writing the book to weaving, as she first wrote mainly about art, but then incorporated the pentominoes and classroom scenes, creating many different levels to read on. She admits that it ended up more complex than she had thought it would be.

Balliett used art and blank plates as inspiration for the characters' names. Calder Pillay is derived from the artist Alexander Calder and Petra Andalee was inspired by the architecture in Petra, Jordan. The names were meant to be different, which Balliett considered "fun for a child." Balliett felt that she could capture the attention of reluctant readers if they related to characters who enjoyed writing and math. Calder and Petra's teacher, Ms. Hussey, was inspired by an old name on Nantucket Island and the old-fashioned word hussy. Balliett compares herself to Ms. Hussey, stating that "[we] think a lot alike." Some of Ms. Hussey's assignments and dialogue even came from Balliett's classroom. She chose the setting of Hyde Park, Chicago, where she currently lives, because she considered it full of secrets that children could discover.

Plot summary

The story begins with three residents of Hyde Park receiving anonymous letters. The letters ask for the recipients' help in solving a centuries-old art mystery. In the days that follow, Petra and Calder's teacher, Ms. Isabel Hussey, gives several assignments related to unique letters and letters found in works of art.

One day after school, Calder follows Petra to Powell's Bookstore, and the pair run into each other, beginning their unusual friendship. Calder is obsessed with pentominoes that he keeps in his pocket and uses to send and receive coded messages, while Petra is an adventurer.

Ms. Hussey's next assignment requires the children to present their interpretation of art. Calder chooses a geographer's box with a painting on it. Petra chooses Lo! by Charles Fort, a strange book in which Fort posits that life is not a series of coincidences but is an interconnecting web of patterns.

Calder and Petra learn that Lo! used to belong to Mrs. Louise Coffin Sharpe. Calder visits Mrs. Sharpe and notices she has a copy of the picture from his geography box, The Geographer by Johannes Vermeer. Meanwhile, Petra has a vision of a lady in an antiquated dress with pearl earrings. For Halloween, she dresses as the lady, and Calder recognizes her as the woman in Vermeer's painting, A Lady Writing.

A Lady Writing is on its way from the National Gallery to an exhibit in Chicago. Before the painting arrives, it is stolen. The thief sends a letter to the Chicago Tribune stating that he has stolen the painting to raise awareness that someone else painted some of Vermeer's paintings. The thief claims that once the art world has repudiated the authenticity of the paintings, he will return A Lady Writing.

The children learn that Ms. Hussey received one of the letters and begin to suspect that the painting is somewhere on school grounds. Calder has an epiphany, connecting himself and Petra with the number 12. This clue leads them to the painting. On exiting the school, the thief begins chasing them, and Calder stays behind, urging Petra to run on with the painting. Petra and a policeman return to the playground where she last saw Calder. While they are searching, the thief takes the painting out of the patrol car.

Back home, Petra finds Calder unconscious with the painting under his arm in her neighbor's treehouse. Calder had hit his head in the altercation. He pretended to be unconscious, then followed the thief to the treehouse, where he found the painting and succumbed to his concussion.

Amid these events, Calder's friend, Tommy Segovia, writes that his stepfather has abandoned the family in New York, where they recently moved. The thief, later found dead of a heart attack, was Xavier Glitts. Glitts had married Tommy's mother, using the pseudonym of Old Fred, to infiltrate the community. This allowed him to case the university and identify local Vermeer enthusiasts, whom he could later implicate.

Genre

Chasing Vermeer is classified in the mystery genre, although it was described by Liz Szabla of Scholastic as "a puzzle, wrapped in a mystery, disguised as an adventure, and delivered as a work of art." Scholastic's teaching website additionally added suspense due to the surprise ending.