Going Mobile With Blue Balliett

Four years ago, Blue Balliett became a children's-publishing sensation with the debut of her acclaimed first novel, "Chasing Vermeer," about kids searching for a missing Vermeer painting. Two years later, she followed up with another  best seller, "The Wright 3," a mystery about Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House. Next month Scholastic is publishing her third children's novel, "The Calder Game," which involves a missing boy and a missing sculpture. Meanwhile, "Chasing Vermeer" remains in the news, since Al Roker is featuring it on his "Today" show kids' book club next month, and Brad Pitt's production company is turning it into a movie. NEWSWEEK's Karen Springen talks with author Blue Balliett, a fellow Chicagoan, about her latest projects. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: You grew up in New York City and saw Alexander Calder's mobiles when you were very young. Is that how you go the idea for your new book?
Blue Balliett: Yes. I am 100 percent sure that my early exposure to Calder changed the way I think and see. Alexander Calder has fascinated me forever. His joyfulness, his lack of pretension, his fascination with balance, are all things I've carried with me all these years.

Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B Entertainment, is producing a movie version of "Chasing Vermeer." When is it coming out—and have you met Brad Pitt?
They're still in production. Don't have a date. I haven't met him [Brad Pitt]. I know we have ideas in common. I know he's interested in kids and art, and in architecture, and in how to give kids bigger ideas. My central message is that kids are powerful thinkers, and their ideas are valuable, and that adults don't have all the answers. Kids clearly are inspired by these books. That makes me happier than any news about book sales or anything else. [After reading the books, kids think] maybe my real world isn't so boring. Maybe there's a building I can save, or I can go to the museum and figure out something no one else has figured out.

Like you, many well-known kids' authors were teachers—Eoin Colfer, who wrote "Artemis Fowl," and Jon Scieszka, who wrote "The Stinky Cheese Man." You taught for 10 years, as a writing-enrichment teacher and then as a third-grade teacher. When did you stop teaching, and how has teaching helped you with your books?
This is my fifth year out of the classroom. I have three [grown] kids. I really spent the past 25 years all day, all night, with kids. I taught different ages, but I became a classroom teacher for third grade. I was a writing-enrichment teacher for a while. I got to have lunch with the kids in my classroom every day because there wasn't enough room in the lunchroom. I was a piece of furniture, and they were blabbing away about whatever they wanted to blab about. Kids do so much creative play that grown-ups don't listen to. As a teacher, you're privy to a lot of secrets. I do feel that kids' thinking is undervalued, and that's part of what got me to write. Kids really aren't being given the encouragement they need to tackle ideas. They have something valuable to contribute. In that way, I think these books are both original at this time, and they're rather old-fashioned. When I think back through children's literature, it's been quite a long time since kids have been given real-world problems.

What books from the past gave kids real-world problems?
"The Secret Garden" and "Treasure Island." Those are kids in an adult setting who have terrible odds, but they figure things out. They're normal kids.

Do you mean that like the kids in your books, they don't have any special powers?
To me, they're normal kids. I've listened to so much kids' thinking over the years, as a teacher and a mom. There's no question in my mind that kids love to be given big ideas to tackle. Especially ideas that kids don't have all the answers to. It's not only a smart thing to do, to give kids big ideas, but it feels good to kids.