Customer Reviews

The Calder Game

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The gang is all back, Calder, Tommy, and Petra, ready for another mystery to solve. It's the same formula with a different setting (England) and a different artist (Alexander Calder). But the three kids are finding balance between themselves, kind of like the mobiles that they all find so fascinating.

If you enjoyed "Chasing Vermeer" and "The Wright 3", this is a must read. In all three of her books, Blue Balliett does a great job of making artists interesting to kids that may not otherwise have an interest in art. (Adults too! I'm inspired to go see the Alexander Calder exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.) It's also a great message about how differences can be cool and art can change people, if they just let it in.

The only thing that bothered me is that the kids were able to get a passport in one day. (It took 8 weeks to get mine!) That just wouldn't be possible in our day and age. But it's just a small detail.

Balliett, Blue. The Calder Game. Illustrated by Brett Helquist. Scholastic Press. 2008.

Another winner by the author of "Chasing Vermeer" and "The Wright 3"! Calder travels to England with his dad and gets caught up in an adventure that involves the disappearance of an Alexander Calder sculpture, just newly installed in a small village square. When Calder goes missing, his friends, Petra and Tommy, fly over to help find him. The story is absorbing and fast-paced. The illustrations provide tantalizing opportunities for puzzle connoisseurs to decode a message. This is a wonderful series for children, 4th grade and up.

Calder, Tommy, and Petra are back for another art-filled mystery.

It all starts when they take a field trip to the art museum to see the new exhibit featuring work by Alexander Calder. Even though their nasty and fun-sucking teacher tries to make the trip as miserable as possible, the three friends manage to find great inspiration and fascination in Alexander Calder's work.

Before long, Calder's dad invites him on a trip to England with him. Calder is super excited about the opportunity and learns that the town they're staying in is home to one of Alexander Calder's sculptures, The Minotaur. When Calder and his dad arrive in the small town, they find that not everyone is as excited about the sculpture as Calder is -- and quite a few people want it gone.

While Calder's dad is off at his seminars all day, Calder starts exploring the town and even goes to the famous Blenheim Palace gardens and maze. This is the ultimate place for Calder as he loves puzzles and mazes. One night, though, both Calder and the sculpture go missing.....a coincidence... maybe? When Calder doesn't show up after a couple of nights, his worry-stricken father brings in some back-up, Petra and Tommy. Together they will try and solve the mystery of where Calder is and what happened to the sculpture.

As always, Blue Balliett has created an intricately woven story which takes art, mystery, and friendship and turns it into one heck of a book. What's especially nice about THE CALDER GAME is that you don't necessarily have to have read the other books in the series (CHASING VERMEER and THE WRIGHT 3) to understand what's going on; while it would be nice, this story is complete on its own.

While I really liked this book, I'm not sure it was quite as good as the first, which often happens, but it was still really good. I liked all of the twists and turns in the mystery and it was fun trying to figure out what happened. I loved the underlying art theme, which made the book very interesting. I definitely think that it takes a certain type of person to want to read this book, as there is a lot of art talk, which I love, but others may not. All in all, I really enjoyed THE CALDER GAME and look forward to more in the series.

One last note! The illustrations in this book, while sparse, were incredible. I thought they really added to the story and I loved them.

Reviewed by: Tasha

This third volume following the bestselling Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3 continues the adventures of three sixth-graders--Calder, Petra and Tommy--in solving another art mystery.

When Calder Pillay travels with his father to a remote village in England, he encounters both mazes and mystery -- including an unexpected Alexander Calder sculpture (Minotaur) in the town square. Both the boy (who was named after the artist) and the sculpture disappear on the same night!

Petra and Tommy fly to England to help Calder's father find him. This mystery twists and turns like a Calder mobile in high wind. Who is the mysterious girl with the camera? Who is the injured man found in the woods? Is there a secret room behind the waterfalls? What is the meaning of the puzzling graffiti left in place of the missing sculpture? Is there an even more twisted game afoot?

Blue Balliett captures the personalities and minds of each character with deft strokes and draws the atmosphere for each scene with masterful nuances. It feels authentic because the author actually visited all the places she describes -- the 1000-year-old village, the graveyards and mazes, the palaces and gardens, the waterfalls and bridges. She has a fine ear for the subtleties of accents and characters' turns of phrase. This is a book to savor.

In this volume, Blue Balliett focuses on the art of Alexander Calder, whose mobiles (hanging) and stabiles (floor-based) revolutionized modern art and gave it a fourth dimension, motion through time. The ever-changing perspective that never looks the same twice leads us to reflect on change in general...now you see it, now you don't...and how each experience changes us as well, moment by moment.

At one point in the story, the three young friends get separated, each trying to find the next clue and keeping up their courage in scary situations. Their ordeals lead them to a stronger bond between them, a greater appreciation of each other's differences. For this reader it was good to have them be rid of their previous animosities.

Back home in Chicago, the kids also see a welcome change in their classroom, where their previously restrictive teacher has also had a happy transformation through the inspiring power of Alexander Calder's art. Blue Balliett's enlightened teaching philosophy shines through the pages here.

Thoughtful readers will especially enjoy the intricate mix and balance between art lore, teaching inspirations, literature and philosophy, art as puzzle, puzzles as ideas, ideas as art. Rather like a mind mobile, wouldn't you say?

There is a secondary puzzle to decode, hidden in Brett Helquist's delightful illustrations, using Alexander Calder icons as an alphabet.

My 10-year-old son loved reading Chasing Vermeer (also by Blue Balliett). He asked for the author's other 2 books for Christmas this year: Wright 3 and The Calder Game. My son is very particular about the books he reads and it was a pleasant surprise for me to learn he likes these books. He also loved the Poppy books by Avi.

Blue Balliett's THE CALDER GAME tells of two missing Calders: one a sculpture, one a boy. A remote village in England produces mystery and danger and when Calder vanishes, it's up to his friends to help his father find him in an adventure packed with twists and turns of plot.

In a small, remote town in England there is a huge fuss about an anonymously donated modern art sculpture. And at the same time that someone steals the sculpture, there is a missing boy, a huge life-size maze, and no clues...yet....

Calder Pillay was named after the great Alexander Calder. Alexander Calder was a famous artist who created many mobiles, and sculptures that made everyone who saw them have a brilliant idea or a new perspective on life. Calder Pillay takes on many of the same traits that Alexander Calder supposedly had. Calder looks at everything in a unique way, he finds symbols for everything and creates shapes, mazes and puzzles with his pentominoes (pieces of yellow plastic in the shape of letters, which Calder carries in his pocket everywhere he goes.).

When Calder goes on vacation with his dad to a small town in England, he is surprised to find an Alexander Calder sculpture in the middle of the town square. The people living in this town are annoyed and frustrated that the sculpture is here, they believe that something modern in an old place shouldn't be there. But a few days after Calder and his dad arrive, the sculpture is stolen, and in its place painted on the ground is WISH-WISH. Calder and his dad are a bit shaken by the robbery, but think it's just some prank and that the police will find the giant, bright red sculpture any moment now. Well, they think this until Calder goes missing. Calder had gone to visit the life-size maze that was said to be one of the hardest mazes to get through, but he hadn't returned. "Is there a game that makes a player seem to disappear even if he or she is not really gone?" (Balliet 144)

The Calder game was an OK book, because the characters were not very realistic. All of the characters thought about symbols, words, and numbers, but most of the characters were only 12 years old. It just didn't seem like a 12 year old would think that way. I also thought that the ending was a little flat, because Blue Balliet spends the whole book building up the suspense of the mystery and then left you with the obvious ending. The Calder Game is a good read for anyone who likes words, numbers, symbols and mysteries.

What can I say about Blue Balliett? I loved Chasing Vermeer. I enjoyed how she fused art with mystery and had fun with a concept totally new to young readers. With The Wright 3, I thought she terribly overplayed her hand. The book was all over the place and utterly confusing. Still I could tell, the voice, the potential was there and I believed that one day Balliett would knock our socks off. I hoped that this time around she'd abandon Petra, Calder, and the gang and venture into a new mystery, but no such luck. So how does her third novel, The Calder Game, fare?

Calder, Petra, and Tommy are still struggling with the idea of being a trio. Petra and Tommy can't get along because each one wants Calder all to themselves, which puts Calder in an awkward position. So when his father heads to England for a conference, Calder escapes the tension by traveling along. He's excited, upon arriving, to discover that the village of Woodstock where they'll be staying, harbors an original Alexander Calder (the artist the boy was named after) sculpture, named The Minotaur. Later, when the sculpture is suddenly stolen and Calder disappears shortly afterwards, Petra and Tommy journey with Mrs. Sharpe to England to help Calder's father find their friend.

When comparing to Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3, I would probably rank this one somewhere in between. It's definitely a major step in the right direction after The Wright 3. It's biggest downfall however, is it's utterly slow and somewhat boring beginning. Chapter One of this book is a very short, one page description of an eerie setting and a missing boy. We, the reader, know this boy is Calder and are supposed to feel excited about reading on and discovering why he's gone missing. I love hooks like this, when they're done well. The problem with this hook? I feel it's actually more of a cop-out, especially after reading what follows.

I got the feeling while reading this, that Balliett wrote the first one-third of her novel before she realized that she hadn't even gotten to her problem, thus the plot of her story, the stolen sculpture and the missing boy. It's then that she probably decided to go back and sprinkle these "mysterious" flashbacks in the beginning, to hold her reader's attention as a promise that she was in fact, getting to her point. I wasn't fooled. Balliett seems to do a lot of incoherent rambling here and makes no real attempt at putting together the pieces laid before her, or moving her story along. She's a better author than this and the beginning one-third of this particular story comes off sloppy, lazy, and hurried. We begin in the past, we're rushed to the future, only to be brought back in time yet again. It's confusing. The beginning of this book reads an awfully lot like The Wright 3 and I found myself putting it down quite often, not wanting to return to it.

But I'm glad I did. Once the story finally gets going, it's rather good. In The Wright 3, I felt sorry for the characters, who seemed to desperately want to do some real detective work, but that Balliett didn't supply them with any. Her new book, actually has a story to tell, without random nonsense floating throughout it. Finally, in The Calder Game, Balliett does away with Petra's "visions", Calder's pentominoes (well, not entirely), and even allows Calder's father to come to the front of the stage and become quite the information-seeker. Gone are the friendly confines of Chicago's Hyde Park and gone is the company of the all-to-lovely Ms. Hussey (the three's new teacher, Ms. Button, is incredibly cranky). I think these slight changes give this series a well needed shot to the arm. Petra and Tommy's realization that they are alone together, in another country, and both grieving the loss of Calder, was well-written, albeit inevitable. It'll be interesting to see where Balliett takes us next, considering that the three children are over their differences now.

Where The Wright 3, and even Chasing Vermeer to a certain extent, dangled way too many unnecessary story pieces in front of us, some that never did fit in anywhere, The Calder Game does a fine job of putting everything together without wasting any information. My only complaint about the ending is Balliett's need to sit us down and explain carefully HOW each and every puzzle piece fit. The last three or four chapters are literally, explanations. If you're going to do away with the unnecessary information, then trust your reader to put together some of the rest, on their own.

These books have a nice look and feel. Brett Helquist's illustrations are creative and the jacket covers are colorful and engaging. I just don't find myself enjoying what's inside them as much as I want to. Blue Balliett has interesting ideas, and I love how she centers each story around a deserving artist. I feel like they're not executed as well as they could be. The Calder Game was pretty good though, so I still have faith that eventually she will put all her talent together and produce something far beyond what Chasing Vermeer even was. I still wish she'd give these characters a break and dabble in something different, but I don't see it coming. So until then, it's her potential that will probably lure me back to a fourth book to see what this trio has in store for us.

I purchased this for my 12-year old. She was a big fan of Balliet's previous books "Chasing Vermeer," and "The Wright Three." This book didn't quite meet her expectations because, in her words, "the three kids in the story didn't have that much to do with solving the mystery at the heart of the story." She did like the descriptions of England and the settings portrayed in the the story. She adds that she found the discussion of Calder's artwork, "cool."

This book is about Calder Pillay, who is named after the famous artist Alexander Calder. I'm not giving out anything more. I really recomend this book, with cleverly written story and mystery.