Right from the beginning this book draws the reader in by showing a map, describing pentominoes and discussing clues to pick up within the artwork shown in the book. An intriguing read for those who like mysteries, and accessible to a reluctant audience with pages presented with more space around text, and the illustrations sprinkled within each chapter. This would coincide well with a trip to the Art Institute in Chicago.

A valuable Vermeer painting mysteriously disappears, and two University of Chicago Lab School students--Petra and Calder--use all their intuition and intelligence to find it. This story follows their burgeoning friendship and their exploits as amateur detectives. In their quest, the two sixth graders are aided and challenged by a free thinking teacher who encourages their creative thought. As an added adventure, this book cleverly employs illustrations as part of the mystery. Every other illustration contains pentomino letters that spell out a sentence in code. Solving the code helps to solve the mystery. One of the central themes of the tale is that connections are possible among even the most unlikely things, as long as we are open to discovering them. Like many mystery novels, this tale's questions are more interesting than the answers, but the book makes up for that deficit in its novel way of approaching the world. The word and logic puzzles make this work a good fit for upper elementary students with a passion for word play. In addition, the setting--downtown Chicago--provides interesting real-life connections for students in the greater Chicagoland area. ( )

Chasing Vermeer was one of my favorite books for a long time. ( )

First in the series. ( )

(#19 in the 2009 Book Challenge)

Well, this was enervating. Children's novel, mystery, set in Chicago. It might be especially fun for Chicago folks -- the kids in the story go to the Lab School at the university, and a lot of the action takes place on the U. of Chicago campus. The characters were great and believable and the plot was pretty good: a Vermeer painting is stolen while it is en route to the Art Institute, and the thief publishes a series of manifestos in the newspaper. The kids combine what they read in the paper with some clues they stumble upon ... and then they also come across a Charles Fort book and they get some additional insights by keeping track of a series of coincidences they experience. The Fortean thing is a huge theme, and I'm okay with that in a fictional work. The thing that got me was the profound intellectual hinkiness at the core of the story's foundation. It's saying to the reader "if you would only THINK FOR YOURSELF instead of listening to authority, you would agree with me." That's both sloppy and cloying.

Grade: C+
Recommended: Maybe ... I think kids who are strong readers will have fun with the mystery and the nest of puzzles within the mystery (it's one of those books that includes codes and clues in the illustrations and all that). There's a lot to be annoyed by, too. ( )