The Calder Game

by Blue Balliett

  Q: Why did you choose a small town in England as the setting for The Calder Game?

  A: After completing a book tour in England a couple of years ago, my husband and I rented a car and drove around the Cotswolds. We stumbled on Woodstock, and suddenly I knew that Calder, Petra, and Tommy should go there, too. I hadn’t planned to write a book set outside of the United States, but Woodstock had a maze of just the right size, and a small community that kids could navigate on their own. It just felt perfect.

  Q: Had you always planned to write a third book about Calder, Petra, and Tommy?

  A: No, I didn’t plan these three mysteries way ahead of time. For each of the three, I’ve had a moment when I just knew that book had to be written, isn’t that odd? I’m an intuitive person, and I kind of wait for that “green light” feeling inside, then get to work.

  Q: Is there a particular character in The Calder Game that you identify with the most?

  A: It’s hard to say … maybe Petra. I’ve been making mobile-poems, sometimes just in my imagination, since I was a teenager. And I understand Petra’s way of doing things.

  Q: In The Calder Game, you introduce a controversial artist named Banksy. Why did you decide to weave him into the story?

  A: When I first stumbled on Banksy’s art, in a newspaper article, I was so excited. He’s both fearless and generous in the big questions he asks about art, and his ideas are so marvelously free. Plus, he’s managed to protect his privacy — the public still doesn’t know what he looks like. How cool is that?

  Q: While most of your characters are fictional, is it true that there’s one particular four-legged character in The Calder Game who is in fact based on someone in your life?

  A: Absolutely. Our old cat, Pummie, is real — personality, shape, and all. He died just as I was finishing the book, at age 19. Everyone in the family misses him dreadfully.

  Q: Your books are popular with both boys and girls. Is that something you were trying to achieve?

  A: Yes. Having a son and daughters, and having taught school for many years, I knew a few secrets about the very real differences between boys and girls. And I don’t mean stereotypical differences — just the ways in which they communicate and find meaning in the world around them. Knowing those secrets helped a lot.

  Q: Your previous books, Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3, have codes embedded in the text and art. How did you develop the code in The Calder Game?

  A: Well, I came up with the codes in the text, for all three books, and Brett Helquist did the imaginative coding in the illustrations. The code in The Calder Game came right from Alexander Calder himself. It kind of jumped out at me one night as I lay in bed, studying photographs of his mobiles before going to sleep.

  Q: What have been your favorite responses to Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3?

  A: Oh, I’ve received many, many fabulous letters from kids. I do love it when kids tell me that my books have changed the way they see their world, and made them believe that their ideas are important. Kids have told me that these books inspire them. That makes me so happy.

  Q: As a former teacher and now a full-time writer, what do you find more demanding and/or rewarding — teaching or writing?

  A: I loved teaching, it was very exciting and totally absorbing. And when I’m writing, I sometimes feel as though I’m still teaching — facilitating adventures, exploring ideas, learning as I go. It’s great to believe so deeply in your lifework, and to be able to do it in a way that feels true. I am very lucky.

  Q: To what extent did your own childhood, growing up in New York City, influence your writing?

  A: At the time I grew up in New York, I think kids had more freedom to get around the city on their own. Museums were a good place to hang out, a place away from small apartments. So the combination of in de pen dence and museums helped to form my way of seeing things, I’m sure.

  Q: You obviously spend a great deal of time developing, researching, and writing your stories. How do you spend your free time?

  A: My writing and my life aren’t really that separate — things that I like to think about generally find their way into what I write. But I love to travel and read, and try to remember to notice the world around me: the shape of a puddle or a crack in the sidewalk, the light coming through a tulip in my kitchen, the beauty of an egg or a perfect apple.

  Q: Are you working on anything now?

  A: As soon as I finished The Calder Game, I found I was already sifting and stirring, thinking about possibilities for the next book. Yes, I’m currently researching, and the next book will have less art but more controversy. I love to make trouble of the right kinds!

  Calder Pillay, the character in Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3 and, of course, The Calder Game, is named after Alexander Calder, the American sculptor and artist whose mobiles and stabiles (as he liked to call them) are described in this book.

  Alexander Calder was born on July 22, 1898, in Penn sylvania, and came from a long line of artists: his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a sculptor, and so was his grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, who created the grand statue of William Penn on top of City Hall in Philadelphia.

  Calder went to school to study mechanical engineering and worked as an engineer for a while, but he’d started creating small sculptures when he was young, and moved to New York City to study art. He eventually moved to Paris to pursue a career as an artist. There he married Louisa James (she was the grandniece of the author Henry James), and started to make toys and smaller sculptures out of various materials that could be moved. He created Cirque Calder, a miniature circus with puppets made of cloth, wire, and string that could be moved to “perform” the circus — you can see this moving sculpture today at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

  In the 1930s, Alexander Calder was inspired by the abstract art of Joan Miró and Piet Mondrian, and decided to try to make abstract shapes (of painted metal and wires) move. These sculptures were hung from the ceiling, or balanced on stands — some were moved by motors, but others were pushed by the air. His friend Marcel Duchamp called them mobiles (Calder, Petra, and Tommy go to an exhibit of his mobiles on page 20). He also experimented with abstract sculptures that stood by themselves (like the Minotaur that Arthur Wish donates to Woodstock), which were called “stabiles” to differentiate them from the sculptures that moved. During World War II, when Calder couldn’t get metal to work with, he created his sculptures out of carved wood.

  Calder wasn’t just a sculptor — he created jewelry and toys, he painted, and he even designed sets for the stage. He and his family settled into a home and studio in Connecticut, but Calder spent time in Paris as well as the United States. Alexander Calder passed away on November 11, 1976, but his work can still be seen all over the world. You can see L’Homme in Montreal, Canada; La Spirale in Paris, France; El Sol Rojo in Mexico City, Mexico; Teodelapio in Spoleto, Italy; and other pieces all over the United States (in New York City, Seattle, Washington DC, Honolulu, Chicago, and Houston to name a few cities).

  On his trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Calder plays the Calder Game, and describes it to Petra and Tommy so they can play, too. There are examples of how to lay out a mobile design on page 34, but the sky is the limit! See if you can create a message, like Blue Balliett does in her dedication. What if you used your mobile to create a mood or feeling — could you use them as a journal entry like Petra does? What does this mobile make you think of?

  Now try getting your mobile off paper and into the air! Ms. Hussey’s class was going to use found objects to play the Calder Game their way. Balance sea shells to remember a sunny day at the beach, hang pictures of your family to create a mobile family tree, use small things you can find or buy at a dollar store to make a mobile collage for a friend, or come up with a whole new idea of your own!

  Woodstock is a real town in Oxfordshire, England. It’s about eight miles away from Oxford, where you can find the oldest university in the En
glish-speaking world. Woodstock has existed for a long time. King Alfred was supposed to have stayed there in the 800s, and King Henry II supposedly courted Fair Rosamund Clifford there during the 1100s (which probably threw Eleanor of Aquitaine into a queenly rage). Queen Mary I had her half sister imprisoned in the lodge at Woodstock in 1554 and 1555 after Wyatt’s rebellion (she became Elizabeth I of England just a few years later).

  In 1705, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was awarded for his successes as a general in the War of the Spanish Succession. Queen Anne gifted him with the manor of Woodstock and promised him funds to build a great palace there. Woodstock used to be a large manufacturer of gloves, and the poet Geoffrey Chaucer had a house there (which you can still see). Today the town attracts tourists to an amazing estate. Can you guess what it is?

  Are you confused by all the Kings and Queens and Dukes? Titles of British nobility can be hard to keep track of, especially in countries where there isn’t royalty. Though titles and rank can get terribly complicated (depending on whether a title can be passed to one’s descendents, and who marries who), here’s a very simple idea of how it works:

  Royalty:

  King/Queen (and their children)

  Peerage:

  Duke/Duchess

  Marquess (or Marquis)/Marchioness

  Earl/Countess

  Viscount/Viscountess

  Baron/Baroness

  Gentry:

  Baronet/Baronetess (or Baronet’s wife if it’s not her title)

  Knight/Lady (or Dame, or Knight’s wife)

  Scottish Baron/Scottish Baroness (or Scottish Baron’s wife)

  Laird/Lady (or wife of a Laird)

  Esquire

  Gentleman

  Did you guess why Woodstock doesn’t depend on gloves anymore? One of the biggest draws to tourists in Woodstock is Blenheim Palace. This elaborate palace was begun in 1705 for John and Sarah Churchill, 1st Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Blenheim Palace was modeled after the grand and stately palace at Versailles, France, and built in an elaborate baroque style — it was meant to be a monument to England. Sir John Vanbrugh designed the country house, and Capability Brown designed the landscaping for the grounds around the estate for the 4th Duke of Marlborough years later. The palace itself wasn’t completed until after the first Duke had died, and Sarah finished it in 1725.

  Does the name Churchill sound familiar? That might be because Sir Winston Churchill, the famous leader of the United Kingdom during World War II, was born in Blenheim Palace. He was the grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, though he wasn’t heir to the estate. Today Blenheim Palace is open to the public, though it’s still the home of the 11th Duke of Marlborough and his family. Visitors can tour the palace and grounds like Calder did, or even hold conferences and weddings there. Scenes from the movies The Scarlet Pimpernel, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix were filmed at Blenheim Palace, too!

  “Penta” means “five” in Greek, and pentominoes are each made of five blocks. Can you guess how many blocks are in each of the octominoes? What about tetraminoes — have you ever played the video game Tetris?

  Here’s how to make your own set of pentominoes:

  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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  Try this: Calder is inspired by the maze at Blenheim Palace, and he starts using his pentominoes to create mazes on graph paper. You can try this yourself after you’ve made a set — try different combinations of pentominoes, or different sizes of space to work on. There are a couple examples of Calder’s mazes on pages 99 and 100. What else can you come up with? What could you do with two or more sets of pentominoes?

  Banksy. No one really knows who he (or she? or they?) is, other than a street artist probably born in 1974 in Bristol, England. He started as a graffiti artist in the early 1990s, and found that he was coming close to getting caught, or taking too long to finish his work. Since graffiti is considered vandalism in many countries, he needed to speed things up, and began using stencils that were made before going out to spray paint his art so that he could create pieces faster. Banksy has created art all over the world, and is known for art that contains strong social or political commentary — his signs that say plain walls are official graffiti areas, or painting “this is not a photo opportunity” in picturesque spots highlight how little people pay attention to the world around them, and how little they think about what they’re reading.

  A lot of what Banksy does — graffiti in public places, hanging up his own art in museums — is illegal, but you can still take his message to heart like Art Wish does with his WISH stencil. Be on the lookout for new ways to define art. Maybe there’s a statue in your town that you’ve seen hundreds of times — have you ever looked at it closely? Do you know what it’s of, or why it’s there, or who made it?

  If you can print out or find a poster or postcard of a famous painting, you can make art like Banksy does. He once used a reproduction of one of Monet’s water lily paintings and added shopping carts sinking into the pond amongst the lilies. Find a piece that speaks to you, or that you don’t like or understand — and make it yours. Paint yourself and your friends walking beneath the night sky in van Gogh’s Starry Night. Connect the dots in a Jackson Pollock painting to create the outline or a tree or spell out a message. Make something new!

  ALSO BY BLUE BALLIETT

  CHASING VERMEER

  THE WRIGHT 3

  This book was originally published in hardcover by Scholastic Press in 2008.

  Text copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Balliett Klein. Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Brett Helquist. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, AFTER WORDS, APPLE PAPERBACKS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. Photograph in the After Words section of Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, UK by Russel Kord / Alamy. Second photograph in the After Words section is an overhead aerial view of Marlborough hedge maze, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England, UK by © Skyscan Photolibrary / Alamy.

  First Scholastic paperback printing, September 2009

  Book design by Marijka Kostiw

  Cover art © 2008 by Brett Helquist

  Cover design by Marijka Kostiw

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-27913-0

  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.