A: Some assignments included turning yourself into an architectural detail on a building and writing about it; making a scale drawing of your home and recording each family member’s favorite spot, then interviewing each person about that choice; sitting in front of a window for an hour and recording what you see in as much detail as possible and then using one detail to begin a mystery story. I could go on and on — each year I tried to build on the interests and curiosities of that particular class, so we did many kinds of investigations.
Q: How did you come up with the names Calder and Petra? Do they have specific origins and significance?
A: Calder’s name comes from Alexander Calder, who was a modern artist with a giant sunburst of a spirit — I’ve always loved his work and his ideas. Petra’s name came from an article in National Geographic magazine that I stumbled on when I was cleaning off the coffee table at home. I have always enjoyed having an unusual name, and I wanted to give Calder and Petra distinctive names also. Although Elizabeth is the name on my birth certificate, I’ve been called Blue — after the color of a deep, clear sky — all my life.
Q: Calder and Petra try to see situations in a different light and to question what they think they know. Do you try to do the same in your day-to-day life?
A: Yes, I do. I’ve found that if you question the way in which you’re seeing something familiar, you almost always catch an unexpected idea or detail. Sometimes you uncover big surprises. I also think that if you look at almost anything closely enough, it becomes intriguing.
Q: Do you keep a journal of unexplainable occurrences?
A: I keep a journal of all kinds of writing ideas — like a sewing basket, it has buttons and threads of thought that I might find useful one day in my writing. Unexplainable occurrences are certainly a part of my journal.
Q: Is it true you write in your laundry room?
A: I write in my laundry room because it has no phone, and nobody else in the family wants to be in there. When my kids were growing up and the house was very noisy, sometimes I put on the washing machine or dryer when I was working. I found the sloshing and humming sounds were good for thinking.
Q: Are you skilled at working with pentominoes? Have you gotten a twelve-piecer?
A: I’m not nearly as skillful at making large rectangles with a set of pentominoes as many third-graders I’ve known. Yes, I’ve gotten a twelve-piecer — after an embarrassing amount of time!
Q: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
A: I knew I wanted to be a writer by the time I was eight or nine. I wrote poetry when I was in college, then two books of oral history, which is nonfiction. I wasn’t brave enough to write fiction until I was in my forties, but it’s so much fun that I can’t imagine doing anything else now.
Q: What advice do you have for young writers?
A: To be patient, listen to your own ideas, and expect writing to be messy. Figuring out exactly what you want to say and how you want to say it is sometimes a slow process, with lots of rethinking and rewriting. But I also believe that being a writer is one of the most satisfying things a person can do. What a thrill when the words come out on the page and you know they’re just right!
Q: What do you do when you’re not writing?
A: When I’m not writing, I like to be with my family (we laugh a lot), take walks in the neighborhood, visit all the bookstores, curl up and read, travel, wander around in museums, and sometimes cook. I’ve found that ideas for writing come from all kinds of unpredictable places.
Q: So, Blue, will there be another book about Calder and Petra?
A: Calder and Petra weren’t quite finished with me yet, so I’m working on another book set in Hyde Park, during the spring and summer of Calder and Petra’s sixth-grade year. A Frank Lloyd Wright building, the Robie House, is a part of the plot, as well as a Hitchcock movie, an H.G.Wells novel, ghosts, and Fibonacci numbers … and Hyde Park is hot, often steamy, deserted…. The ingredients in this second mystery are quite different.
Q: What was the most challenging part of creating the art for Chasing Vermeer?
A: The hardest part was finding a way to hide the pentomino code into the pictures. I didn’t want to make the code too difficult or too easy to figure out.
Q: What kind of research did you do for the project?
A: I spent a few days in Chicago with Blue Balliett exploring the neighborhood described in the book. The architecture is very important to the story, so I thought it was necessary to see it for myself. I also looked at some books about Vermeer, and just for fun I played with some pentominoes.
Q: Who’s your favorite painter? Why?
A: My favorite painter is N.C. Wyeth. His pictures are full of pirates, cowboys, and knights, all the things I love. His paintings tell great stories, they are full of adventure.
Q: You read a lot of comic books as a kid. Do you still?
A: I read them sometimes. I like Hellboy and Bone.
Q: Any advice for aspiring young artists?
A: Learn how to draw very well. I know this sounds obvious but it really is the most important thing. Drawing is a skill that should be studied and practiced just like learning to play a musical instrument. I keep a sketchbook and try to draw every day. I also recommend reading and learning how to tell stories. Illustration, after all, is just telling stories with pictures.
Do you like sharing secrets with a friend? Well, then maybe you and your friend need a secret code. Calder and Tommy used pentominoes and the numbers one, two, and three to create their secret code. How will you make yours? Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.
Try substituting the twenty-six letters of the alphabet with the numbers one through twenty-six. Just to throw any snoopers off the trail, count backwards: A=26, B=25, C=24, and so on. Can you decipher this? 4-19-26-7 26-9-22 8-12-14-22 12-7-19-22-9 18-23-22-26-8?
Try making a code using a combination of shapes and numbers. One way to do this is to create a grid similar to Calder and Tommy’s. Run the shapes (as many or as few as you’d like) down the side and the numbers along the top. Then fill in the alphabet either up and down or across the rows. In this code,
Once you and your friend have your own secret code, grab a postcard or some notepaper to write a message that only the two of you can read!
Do you like puzzles? Do you like making stuff? Try making your own pentominoes! Here’s how:
You’ll need a pencil, a ruler, a highlighter or crayon, a 6" × 10" piece of thin cardboard (perhaps the cover of an old spiral notebook), and a pair of scissors.
Each of the twelve pentominoes in a set is made from 5 equal size squares. To make your set, begin by making a grid. Starting at a corner of your 6" × 10" piece of cardboard, make a tic-mark every inch along each edge of your rectangle.
Use your ruler and pencil to draw straight dark lines connecting the tic-marks top to bottom, then side to side, to create your grid.
Following the diagram below, outline each five-square pentomino with your highlighter or crayon.
4. Now you’re ready to cut out your pentominoes. Cut straight along the highlighted lines.
Voilà! You now have twelve pentominoes and you’re ready to play.
When Brett Helquist began the illustrations for Chasing Vermeer, he didn’t just sit down and draw the cover, the map, and the twenty-four pictures inside the book. First he had to decide what the characters looked like. Blue Balliett describes Calder and Petra in the text (she writes, for example, “he always looked like he’d just woken up,” and she “had a fierce triangle of hair”), but Brett still had a lot of work to do. Think about how many people you know with brown curly hair or sleepy eyes. Even with these features in common, they are each unique. Through trial and error and many, many sketches, Brett arrived at the characters in this book. Here are a few of those sketches.
Every piece of art has a skeleton that starts with a few lines.
One way to determine if a person’s head is drawn too big or too sma
ll for their body is through proportions: For young people, the body is usually five heads high; adults’ bodies are generally seven heads high.
Illustrators often have to draw the same character over and over again with different expressions.
Sometimes it’s helpful to make notes in the margin, like “too much forehead” or “6 heads tall.” With each small adjustment, the character begins to come to life.
Its strength comes from being whole, but its parts are fragile. Its outside is mostly the color of autumn leaves — umber, gold, red, yellow — while its insides have no colors at all. It is smaller than a pizza box but holds thousands of letters. It can be used once or over and over. It weighs about as much as three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It holds a mystery, four codes, many pictures, and a secret message.
Can you guess what it is? Guess a few times …
Answer (see code chart for Calder and Tommy’s code):
W:1 V:2 — W:1 U:2 — V:2 V:1 P:1 — I:1 L:2 L:2 Y:1 — W:1 I:2 — F:3 L:2 W:2 T:2 — V:1 F:1 I:2 N:1!
Your turn! Choose an item — maybe something at home — that feels like a work of art to you. Describe this object without saying what it is. Then see if your friends and family can guess what it is you’ve described. Did you stump them?
Have you ever been to a museum or art gallery and felt bored? Not really sure what it is you’re supposed to be “looking at”? Well, breaking down a piece of art to its core elements — sort of like breaking down a recipe by ingredients — is a great place to start. You can focus on the artist’s technique: How is the medium (paint, pencil, pastel, ink, etc.) applied? Check out the composition — that’s the placement of the picture’s elements. Look at the colors used. How do the artist’s color choices affect the mood or emotions of the artwork? Focus on the subject matter — what is being depicted? (Sometimes the choice is abstract.) Each element can be seen individually or as part of a whole. You may like one aspect of a painting or sculpture but not another. However you choose to look at art, just keep looking; there are many ways of seeing.
A trip to a museum can be a treasure hunt or a game. When you look at Vermeer’s paintings — or any other artist’s work — you might want to look for patterns or recurring ideas. Does the artist paint one item over and over? What is it? Are his or her color choices always the same? Calder, Petra, and the rest of Ms. Hussey’s class searched for letters in paintings (even though they didn’t have much luck). Choose a different item (for example, apples, teacups, or tulips) and see if you can find it in various artists’ work. How do different artists treat the same object? Do any patterns emerge? Keep track.
Vermeer is thought to have painted thirty-five paintings, but he didn’t sign them all. To this day, there is debate as to the authenticity of some of the paintings attributed to him. The original paintings can be found in museums around the world, so depending on where you live, perhaps you can see one for yourself. If not, there are many great books where you can examine the reproductions. Whether you’re admiring one of Vermeer’s paintings on a wall or a reproduction of one in a book or on a Web site, be sure to look at his technique, composition, color, and subject matter.
For more information on Vermeer's paintings, turn to Vermeer: The Complete Works by Arthur K. Wheelock (published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997).
Many thanks to the hundreds of kids at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools with whom I was lucky enough to work, and who taught me so much about thinking and seeing. I am indebted to Lucinda Lee Katz, Beverly Biggs, and my colleagues at Lab for making it possible for me to teach and write. The Mary Williams Award was a great surprise and a big help. Special thanks go to my mentor and friend Bob Strang, who introduced me to the world of pentominoes and the marvels of constructivist teaching.
There are various opinions on Vermeer, his work, and the actual number of paintings he created. I based the facts in this book on the research of Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Curator of Northern Baroque Paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and author of several fascinating books on Vermeer. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Wheelock for answering my many questions. I want to thank him, also, for his advice on the muscle power of eleven-year-olds.
Will Balliett, Betsy Platt, Lucy Bixby, Anne Troutman, and Barbara Engel all took the time to look at early drafts and talk about ideas, and Nancy and Whitney Balliett have been helpful throughout — thank you all so much. My agent, Amanda Lewis, steered me with the greatest skill through a number of adventures. Three cheers to my editor, Tracy Mack, whose wisdom, imagination, and belief got me where I needed to go. Thanks to Leslie Budnick, associate editor, for also putting many thoughtful hours into the manuscript, and for being available and helpful at all times.
I want to thank my amazing husband, Bill Klein, who has helped me in a thousand ways. This book wouldn’t exist without him.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-54101-5
Text copyright © 2004 by Elizabeth Balliett Klein. Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Brett Helquist. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, APPLE PAPERBACKS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
We gratefully acknowledge the following institutions for permission to reproduce the work of Johannes Vermeer van Delft (1632–1675) in this book: The Lady Writing, The National Gallery, Washington, D.C., and The Geographer, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, both images courtesy of Arothek in Weilheim, Germany.
Chasing Vermeer is a work of fiction. While some of the settings in Hyde Park are actual, others have been altered or invented.
First paperback edition, May 2005
Cover illustration by Brett Helquist
Cover design by Marijka Kostiw
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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