Common Sense Note
There's so much here to stimulate a child's mind: the codes embedded in both the story and the illustrations, art history, pentominoes, the works of Charles Fort, mathematical patterns, and much more. Many kids will want more information on one or more of the subjects presented and, with help from an adult, should find profitable areas for pleasurable research.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
With adult movies such as The Girl with the Pearl Earring, and adult books such as The DaVinci Code capturing attention, Blue Balliett's first book is well-timed. This is a thinking child's mystery, filled not only with the traditional accoutrements of adult mysteries (clues, red herrings, multiple suspects, plot twists, concluding explanations), but also with secret codes (which the reader has to decode to read the whole story), mathematical patterns, hidden drawings, art history, and references to the real books of Charles Fort, who wrote in the beginning of the 20th century about unexplained phenomena. The fun comes not from solving the mystery, but from watching the main characters figure it out.
Though the vocabulary level is not unduly high, this book will be a challenge even for accomplished young readers. The author and illustrator encourage poring over it carefully and pausing to think and experiment. Parts of the story are written in code. Yet if one stretches out the reading too much it's easy to lose track of the myriad details the author expects the reader to remember, necessitating going back and rereading. An intellectual challenge wrapped up in a mystery novel -- bright children are going to love this.
From the Book:
This book begins, like a set of pentominoes, with separate pieces. Eventually they will all come together. Don't be fooled by ideas that seem, at first, to fit easily. Don't be fooled by ideas that don't seem to fit at all. Pentominoes, like people, can surprise you.
Plot Summary:
A famous Vermeer painting, The Lady Writing, is stolen while in transit to a Chicago museum. Petra and Calder, classmates at the University of Chicago Lab School, think they may be able to solve the mystery. Petra has found, and then lost again, a related letter, and each of them may be getting supernatural messages about the theft, Petra directly from the Lady in the painting, and Calder from a set of pentominoes.
As they track down clues, their investigations lead them in many directions: an old lady in the neighborhood, a famous bookstore, their teacher, a book of freakish phenomena, a friend's disappearance, and a series of odd coincidences. No one is what they seem to be, and Petra and Calder don't know whom they can trust.
Related Books:
More Thoughtful Mysteries
Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken
When Grandfather's Parrot Inherited Kennington Court by Linda Allen
Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
Up from Jericho Tel by E.L. Konigsburg
A Watching Silence by Anthony Masters
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Holes by Louis Sachar
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ViolenceCalder is knocked off a slide and injured. |
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Social BehaviorChildren sneak out of their homes and engage in dangerous behavior. |
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