thief takes the painting out of the patrol car. Back home, Petra finds Calder unconscious with the painting under his arm in her neighbor’s treehouse. Calder had hit his head in the altercation. He pretended to be unconscious, then followed the thief to the treehouse, where he found the painting and succumbed to his concussion. Amid these events, Calder’s friend, Tommy Segovia, writes that his stepfather has abandoned the family in New York, where they recently moved. The thief, later found dead of a heart attack, was Xavier Glitts. Glitts had married Tommy’s mother, using the pseudonym of Old Fred, to infiltrate the community. This allowed him to case the university and identify local Vermeer enthusiasts, whom he could later implicate. Genre Chasing Vermeer is classified in the mystery genre, although it was described by Liz Szabla of Scholastic as "a puzzle, wrapped in a mystery, disguised as an adventure, and delivered as a work of art." Scholastic's teaching website additionally added suspense due to the surprise ending. 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