Author's Note: The Wright 3

The journey isn't over after Chasing Vermeer. Favorite characters Petra and Calder have more mysteries to solve and adventures to experience. Author Blue Balliett gives the inside scoop on the second book, The Wright 3.

Dear Reader,

I found Calder and Petra were still in my head after Chasing Vermeer was finished. I somehow wasn’t through with them, or perhaps they weren’t through with me. And I wanted to give them a completely different kind of art challenge to work on…

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House is right in Calder and Petra’s neighborhood, and the hot issues that endanger it are, like the art issues in Chasing Vermeer, very real. What happens to the Robie House in this book is very similar to what has happened to many large works of art that become too expensive to save. Plus, the geometry in these art glass windows is perfect for kids — they understand instantly that this is a type of language. Kids have such quick brains!

Frank LloydWright is fascinating, because each one of his buildings is, in a sense, a puzzle — each has many pieces that fit within and around each other, and it is very difficult to figure out how they work or how exactly he put it all together. I love the tricky, surprising feeling of his buildings.

I got a bit wild with The Wright 3, just as I did with Chasing Vermeer — I like to put together ideas that most adults don’t think should go together. An H.G. Wells novel got into the plot, as well as an Alfred Hitchcock movie, some Chinese jade, ghosts, and a sandwich bag of chewy red fish. Perhaps most important, Tommy got into the book. He is a kind of shadow-character in Chasing Vermeer, but he is far from that in The Wright 3.

Love,
Blue