CD Giveaway - 33Miles, "One Life"
Ends Aug 4, 2010
The country-pop sound established in their eponymous debut is a mainstay for this album as well, and even adds a little more southern flavor.
CD Giveaway - Phil Wickham, "Cannons"
Ends Aug 3, 2010
With an opening shot that hits the sonic pinnacle, this collection of spiritual Brit pop/rock is heavily influenced by Keane, Travis, Coldplay, and U2.
2004 is turning into the Year of the Artists. With The Da Vinci Code dominating the adult fiction market, it only makes sense that an art mystery would be aimed at the juvenile niche.
Chasing Vermeer introduces young readers to the works of 15th Century Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer, through the eyes of 6th grade students Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay.
Calder and Petra attend a special grade school, in the middle of Hyde Park's University of Chicago. The assignments are a bit different than your run-of-the-mill classwork, and their teacher, Miss Hussey, is even more different. She assigns them to look for life-changing letters, which eventually leads to looking in art, prompting Petra and Calder to individually consider just exactly what this mysterious thing called "art" is in the first place:
What was art, anyway? The more she thought about it, the stranger it seemed. What made an invented object special? Why were some manmade things pleasing and others not? Why wasn't a regular mixing bowl or spoon or lightbulb a piece of art? What made certain objects land in museums and others in the trash?
She guessed that most people didn't ask that question. They just believed that they were looking at something valuable or beautiful or interesting. They didn't do any hard thinking about it.
Whereas Petra is a more written-word person, Calder prefers puzzles, deconstructing and reconstructing things and looking for new and interesting patterns that emerge:
He wrote down the word ART. He followed it quickly with: RTA
RAT
ATR
TRA
It wasn't what he'd meant to put on his list, but his pencil kind of took charge. He read what he'd written aloud. It was a tongue twister, he noticed with delight, aside from being every combination of A,R, and T.
Calder shook himself back toward the assignment. Was his weird list a piece of art? How about the old-fashioned kind of art, the kind in museums that turned up on postcards and posters in people's kitchens, the kind that they'd been talking about in school today? Ms. Hussey was always saying, "Listen to your own thinking." Well, what if he, and not those museum people, was the one to decide what was wonderful to look at? What would he choose? The same stuff that was now famous? Probably not the French lady with the too-small dress.
Psst. No one tell Calder that he left TAR off his list, okay?
When Petra obtains a copy of Charles Fort's Lo!, she and Calder begin stumbling over several coincidences that lead them to worry about a specific Vermeer painting, which then ends up being stolen by a thief with an unusual motive:
The Chicago Tribune editorial board printed this unsigned letter the following morning: Dear Concerned Art Lovers,
I am the one responsible for the temporary disappearance of A LADY WRITING. She remains in her frame, and no harm will come to her. She will be returned when the lies that surround the lifework of Johannes vermeer have been corrected. I have committed a crime, but in my heart I know that my theft is a gift. Sometimes bold steps must be taken to uncover the truth.
The thief claims that many of the Vermeer paintings are forgeries, and that the curators and collectors don't want to admit to this because the value of the forged paintings would plummet. Suddenly the entire world is enveloped in a storm of artistic scrutiny, as everyone from teenagers to retired folks apply keen eyes to the works of the Dutch master, comparing the works of those that are known to be his to those that are assumed.
Meanwhile, Calder and Petra continue to be besieged by all manner of Fortean coincidences that lead them to search for--and find--the missing painting.
The disappointing bit of this novel is that the solutions always arrive through a series of disconnected events that just lead the kids to think in certain ways; I prefer my mysteries to be solved in more Holmesian deductive manner. However, there are other types of clue chasing throughout the book that will keep the target 8-to-12 year old target audience. The key is pentominoes, and the letters they form. Calder receives letters from his friend, Tommy, in pentomino code that the reader has to decode for himself. Additionally, Brett Helquist has hidden pentominoes in the various chapter illustrations for the reader to find and put together for an ultimate hidden message.
Filled with unusual yet likable characters and adventure that's just a little more dangerous than your average Scooby Doo mystery, Chasing Vermeer is an entertaining read that manages to serve several purposes in one concise novel. I know more about Vermeer now than I ever did. And I'm shopping for my own set of pentominoes.
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2004 is turning into the Year of the Artists. With The Da Vinci Code dominating the adult fiction market, it only makes sense that an art mystery would be aimed at the juvenile niche.
