The Bookworm Review: Chasing
Vermeer by Blue Balliett
By Haluk Akay
Do you love a story
filled with twists, turns, and plots of stolen
paintings? Well,
Chasing Vermeer is ideal for you!
It takes place in a
Chicago suburb where young Petra Andalee, a shy but avid writer,
and
Calder Pillay, an only child who misses his good friend, Tommy
Segovia,
are drawn into a mystery regarding Vermeer’s painting. This work of art,
A Lady Writing, is stolen on its way from Washington DC’s National
Gallery of Art to a Chicago art show.
Calder is partly
Indian and partly Canadian. His Indian father works
as a designer for the city parks. Every August their front yard is
overflowing with new types of plants and ferns. His Canadian mother, Yvette, teaches
math at the university, known as the U. He and Petra go
to
school at the university’s middle school. Calder is lonely because his
friend Tommy recently moved away, after Tommy’s mother remarried. His new step-
father
becomes a piece of the puzzle as the story develops.
Petra’s household is like the
aftermath of a tornado.
Uncared-for pets run through the house, drinking from toilets, and
her four
younger siblings are always noisily screaming for things they
‘misplaced.’
Petra’s dad is from the North Africa, and her mom is from the
Middle
East. She was named
Petra because it was a family tradition to name all
first-born daughters “Petra,” which is an ancient city in Jordan
famous
for its stone sculptures. She always wants to be normal—like every
other kid who goes to the U.
Calder Pillay has twelve pentominoes which are little plastic
letters. Every time
he takes one out of his pocket, he thinks of a word
that it stands for, and uses that clue to solve this mystery. For
instance, a letter a bully from school kicked under the table was
T—for
Trouble.
The story is filled with
“12’s”, for instance, Calder and Petra’s age,
the number of pentominoes, the 12th month of the 12th day (the day
a
Vermeer scholar was murdered in Italy). Also the illustrations of
Chasing Vermeer have clues to help the reader solve the mystery.
In almost
every illustration there is a frog drawn into the pictures because
the
frog becomes an important clue in the puzzle.
After I read this book,
we were able to go to Washington DC, and I
stopped by the National Gallery of Art to research Vermeer. We
went to the
Dutch section, but couldn’t find any Vermeer paintings. After asking a
guard, I learned that the Vermeer paintings were moved to the
first
floor. Just like
Petra and Calder, I found my way through statues and
galleries, until we came upon A Lady Writing—exactly like the
picture in
the book! I also was
chasing Vermeer!