Do you like a story filled with puzzles, mysteries, excitement, and adventure? Do you just love it when every "thread" in a story comes together as you and the characters both make discoveries? If you do, then Chasing Vermeer is for you. I had heard good things about the book so I got it from the library. I read it and it is AWESOME!!!

The story revolves around two kids, a stolen painting, and the famous artist Vermeer. Calder and Petra (the main characters) go to the same school but aren't really friends yet. But the mystery of a stolen painting brings then together in one heart-pounding mystery! This is one of those books you simply can't put down until you have read the last words!

I loved the characters--they seemed so real and you could really relate to them. You liked both of them and wanted them to succeed. It was also a really good mystery book! If you love awesome books, then this book is for you!

Chasing Vermeer, a Critique

When a valuable painting is stolen, three anonymous letters are sent out. The robber also leaves a note in the painting's empty package. His words were: "You will come to agree with me". A very bizarre robbery.

Calder and Petra are the main characters. They are in the same class, and have a teacher who thinks unconventionally. No one knows that she received one of the three letters.
Is it a decoy? Maybe...

What is this robbery's purpose?
Who is the robber?
What does he REALLY want?

These are all questions that are answered in this well-paced and well-written novel.

I think that Chasing Vermeer is a good, realistic mystery. It made me read a book about the life of Johannes Vermeer containing pictures of all his paintings. His life was enveloped in mystery as well, because of the lack of documentation, his paintings told little about him, and he didn't make any self-portraits.

In the mystery book they include the real paintings, like the one that was stolen which was called "A Lady Writing". The story is exciting, you never want to stop reading it. It's a real page turner.

You can see that I liked Chasing Vermeer. If you like interesting books you will like it as well.

By David III

I chose this book for my 8 year old's School Fall Book Report because it had all the hooks that would typically grab the little guy who's a voracious reader AND (let's not forget the grownups that partake of reading to our children) it was going to be fun for me too! Part of our assignment was to create a representative MOBILE of the story elements and this book had it all - 16 century stolen masterpiece, math puzzle pentominoes, decoding messages, clues hidden in the illustrations, a girl-boy team of gifted kid super-sleuths, a long list of suspects, the ideal inspired young teacher, eye-popping imagery in Ms. BAlliett's writing....

It has such great elements of mystery and art and mathematical tools and emotional hooks to draw one into this most amazing of settings for a great read. The book started out so breathlessly great with a culturally mixed hero/heroine pairing and most exciting of all - the Obamas' neighborhood and probably the VERY SAME school that Sasha and Malia go to at U of Chicago!!!

WEll I either ran short of breath due to lack of exercise or this book got so muddled up going in so many different directions with so many red herring clues (like enough already with Frog and frogs) that I literally watched my son lose interest about 2/3 way into the story elements that time and time again failed to deliver for him and for me.

And worst literary crime of all - the solving of the mystery is a bunch of hocus pocus, unscientific anti-climactic to the point of being intellectually offensive that makes me wonder if the story was too much even for Ms. Balliett to find a resolution worthy of her stage craft.

I gave it a 4 star because despite the disappointing ending - it has some amazing settings, subjects that allow for further research and I bet my 8 year old never forgets the Lady WRiting and will probably be excited if we ever get to the National Gallery in D.C. and happen to stumble on the Lady Writing. It's certainly worth the price! and will nevertheless go down in history as a notable classic of its day.

On paper (which I guess is a phrase that doesn't work quite as well in regard to books), the concept of this book thrills me! Geometric puzzles, art history clues, and natural phenomenons? I love it all! And even when I first read this book, I was totally gripped by the story and all the layers of mystery and curiosity. It was in my second reading that this house of cards flattened out on me.

This book frustrated me much in the same way that Harry Potter has. The author just takes too many liberties to allow the reader to feel part of the story. It feels unfair when an author gets to have a surprise hidden panel in the wall at the end of the story. I don't know if this is so much true for all genres. A mystery, however, should be tight. It needs to feel like a completed puzzle at the end - either leaving you feeling satisfied that you called it right, or amazed at how well it all came together. When it feels like a jumble that nobody could have pieced together except the author (and even appears that the author took pains to make it more complicated than necessary) it just doesn't work. In some cases of literature (and art!), when you think "I could have made that," it is a compliment on how easy the creator made it look. In the case of Chasing Vermeer, and knowing full well my limitations as a writer, thinking "I could have written that" is not a good thing.

For a book club book, I think this will still be a delight to young readers. If the club is given all the extra ingredients to completely lose themselves in a world of mathematical and artistic mystery, fall in love with Chasing Vermeer. I have only read this book aloud with students. To independently read it as a book club, students would probably need to be older and have strategies for figuring out the references the book makes.