Themes
Some of Balliett's "real-world ideas" in Chasing Vermeer were "Do coincidences mean anything?" and "What is art and what makes it valuable?" Balliett says her "central message" is "kids are powerful thinkers, and their ideas are valuable, and that adults don't have all the answers."
A book by Rita Soltan entitled Reading Raps: A Book Club Guide for Librarians, Kids, and Families analyzed Chasing Vermeer's themes as follows:
Deception and problem solving are central themes in this novel as both the thief and the central adult players use a variety of ways to hide the truth while the children employ a series of mathematical and problem-solving concepts to piece together the clues to the puzzle. In addition, Calder and Petra develop a special friendship and certain respect for the value of art.
As the thief gains publicity by challenging the community to figure out which paintings claimed to be Vermeer's were indeed painted by him, everyone starts to look at the depth in art. Sondra Eklund, who writes a book review blog, noted that the reader was left with the impression to study Vermeer's paintings and art more closely. In the book, Ms. Hussey challenges her class to the question, "What is art?"
Other themes include chance and coincidence. During Chasing Vermeer, Charles Fort's book, Lo!, inspires the children to list and pay attention to coincidences as they realize that they are more than what they seem and explore the concept that they make up one unexplained pattern. Balliett stated that she wanted to convey how coincidences were noticeable and felt meaningful, and how they could matter even if they were unexplainable.
Read more about this topic: Chasing Vermeer
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)