Common Sense Media Review
A mystery, fantasy, and imaginative launch pad.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 9+?
Any Positive Content?
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Parent and Kid Reviews
Based on 3 parent reviews
Based on 13 kid reviews
Kids say the book offers an intriguing mix of art, mystery, and puzzles that captivates young readers, though opinions vary about its clarity and target age group, with some finding it confusing. While many appreciate the character development and themes, others feel the narrative is too simplistic and may not appeal to older readers.
- intriguing plot
- character development
- age appropriateness
- mixed clarity
- mystery element
- enjoyable puzzles
Summarized with AI
Summarized with AI
What's the Story?
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.
Is It Any Good?
An intellectual challenge wrapped up in a mystery novel -- bright children are going to love this. Blue Balliett's first book 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 CHASING VERMEER's main characters figure it out.
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. If one stretches out the reading too much it's easy to lose track of the myriad details, necessitating rereading.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about art. What makes an object a work of art?
How do you determine its value?
Families can also talk about coincidences. Do you believe coincidences have meaning, or are they just a matter of chance?
Book Details
- Author :
- Illustrator : Brett Helquist
- Genre : Mystery
- Book type : Fiction
- Publisher : Scholastic Inc.
- Publication date : July 11, 2004
- Number of pages : 354
- Last updated : October 9, 2025
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