The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues [Hardcover]

Ellen Raskin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 1975

Answering an advertisement for an artist's assistant involves seventeen-year-old Dickory Dock in several mysteries and their ultimate solutions.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Juvenile; 1st edition (April 28, 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525408053
• ISBN-13: 978-0525408055
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,799,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rich, Strange Mystery Story, June 11, 1998

By 

tacitus2017 (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues (Hardcover)

It's a pity that this book is out of print. It's my favorite of Ellen Raskin's Mysteries for young people -- as intricate and unique as *The Westing Game* and *The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)*, but with a darkness and emotional richness usually off-limits in children's books.

The story unfolds as a set of episodes, criminal cases which the slick, successful, and shallow New York painter Garson and his student assistant, Ms. Dock (who resents the first name given to her by her parents, "Dickory") undertake to solve at the special request of the Greenwich Village precinct police investigator. The Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson rapport that Garson and Dickory develop begins to unravel as some threatening signs emerge, involving a blackmailing ring working out of the first floor of the building that houses Garson's studio; the lurking presence, in the basement, of Isaac Bickerstaff, a hulking and crippled deaf-mute whom Garson shelters; and a police investigation of the disappearance and suspected murder of the master painter Edgar Sonnenberg. These signs lead to uncomfortable questions about Garson's obscure past, and Dickory finds herself pursuing her own investigation while attempting to keep the police at a safe distance.

An unforgettable image from the book involves Dickory's discovery of a masterpiece by the painter Sonnenberg: it depicts a middle-aged woman dressed as a peddler, standing on a shadowy streetcorner before a city crowd whom she salutes mockingly with a banana, her head thrown back in wild laughter. Having read this book for the first time in the seventh grade, I can see that this image and others like it from Raskin's book were for me a first glimpse into a world of emotional shadings and moral ambiguities that we associate with Modernist art and literature. The mixture of tragic, grotesque, and comic elements sometimes falls short in its attempts to achieve these effects, but in its attempt to explore these feelings and the capacity of art to express them, the book proves itself to be more ambitious than many novels intended for adult readers, to say nothing of other children's books.

Thinking about the book now, I still wonder how Raskin managed to invent the world it describes. It's difficult to think of anything else quite like it.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An All-Time Favorite, August 22, 2003

By 

"fictionandprose" (OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues (Paperback)

I was fortunate enough to read "The Tattooed Potato and other clues" a few times before my local library took it off the shelves. I absolutely love this book and it's still among my top five favorites though now that I'm older (and hopefully wiser) I've read a wider selection of profound and celebrated literature. I'm rathe saddened by the fact that I cannot find this book any longer even at the library.

In this story, an art student by the name of Dickory Dock (a name that makes her cringe thanks to the inevitable puns with it) becomes an assistant to Garson, a mysterious and eccentric artist living in Greenwich village.

Mysteries within a mystery is the best way to describe the events of this book-- Dickory and Garson begin solving cases for the police chief, acting as Inspector Noserag (Garson backwards, almost) and Sergeant Kod (Dock backwards, almost) as they deduce. 'Sergeant Kod' starts to form her own deductions as she gets to know the many faces of Garson and finds herself entangled in a bigger mystery.

Highly recommended! I strongly urge you to read it should the oppurtunity presents itself-- it's hard to come by this great book now that it is out-of-print.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another good book by Raskin, December 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues (Hardcover)

I've heard some people say that Ellen Raskin hasn't written anything half as good as The Westing Game. I beg to differ.

I found The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues, to be a captivating and suspenseful book. I could not stop reading, wanting to read more about Dickory and all the the other colorful characters, and solve the mini mysteries that all together helped solve the intricate main mystery.

It's fun to see Raskin's quirky humor, and how all of the delightfully odd names are perfectly suited to the characters.

If not quite up to the level of The Westing Game, this book is still enjoyable, and worth a read. If do you pick up, I hope it captures your interest as much as it did mine.