Given the opportunity, kids can ask questions that help them to think their way through tough problems that adults haven’t been able to figure out - problems like the theft of a Vermeer painting! In writing Chasing Vermeer, I wanted to explore the ways kids perceive connections between supposedly unrelated events and situations, connections that grown-ups often miss.

We asked many questions, visited many museums in the city, and set off a number of alarms - by mistake, of course. One year my class and I decided to figure out what art was about. I began teaching 3rd grade at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. When our kids started school, we moved to Chicago. My husband and I met and were married on Nantucket, lived there year-round for another 10 years, and had our two children there. I surprised myself by writing two books of ghost stories, stories collected by interviewing people. The Met has five Vermeer paintings and the Frick three, so Vermeer and I have been friends for many years.Īfter studying art history in college, I moved to Nantucket Island, in Massachusetts, in order to write. By the time I was a teenager, I sometimes stopped at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Frick Museum after school, just to wander and look and think. I was born in New York City and grew up playing in Central Park, getting my share of scraped knees, and riding many public buses and subways. Sharpe who's acting suspiciously - there's a ghost who mingles with the guards in the museum, a cat who acts like a spy, and bystanders in black jackets who keep popping up.With pieces and players, you have all the ingredients for a fantastic mystery from the amazing Blue Balliett. Sharpe, who may be playing her own kind of game with the clues.

and has a word or two to say about the missing treasure.The kids have been drawn in by the very mysterious Mrs.

Now they've been matched with two new sleuths - Zoomy, a very small boy with very thick glasses, and Early, a girl who treasures words. THE PLAYERSCalder, Petra, and Tommy are no strangers to heists and puzzles. And nobody has any idea where they and the other eleven artworks might be. From the NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of CHASING VERMEER and HOLD FAST THE PIECESThirteen extremely valuable pieces of art have been stolen from one of the most secretive museums in the world.

Chasing vermeer by blue balliett