Review: Chasing Vermeer
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.
What Parents Should Know
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 Media Review
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.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
Join Us