Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett

Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay establish a friendship of sorts while trying to solve the case of a missing Vermeer painting.

One of the things I liked about this book were the extras in the illustrations. There was a frog in many of the illustrations...frogs and Frog are part of the story line as well. There were also pentominoes in many of the illustrations as well as in the story line.

One of the games I like to play is Blokus. I discovered that the shapes in Blokus are the same pentominoes in Chasing Vermeer. I actually pulled the ones shown and described in the book and tried to do what Calder does...put the pentominoes into rectangular shapes. I'm not very good at it, unfortunately.

Genre: mystery

Topics: math, artists, strange or unexplained events, pentominoes

Mrs. Beckwith's Rating: 3 of 5

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