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| Blue Baillet ill. by Brett Helquist |
| The Chicken House |
| 1904442714 |
| Oct 2005 |
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| What an excellent concoction this is! Especially recommended for that group of children referred to by the rather unpleasant phrase 'gifted and talented'. It's a book for the thinking reader, for the reader who likes puzzles and mysteries. It's also a book that will make teachers who slavishly follow schemes of work think carefully about becoming more like Ms Hussey, the novel's wonderfully spur-of-the-moment teacher.
The book uses pentominoes (a set of 12 tessellating shapes each comprising five squares) as a model for the way apparently unconnected events can be made to interlock and lead to the solution of a mystery. The central relationship between Petra and Calder is somewhat serious and geeky but works well and the moody black-and-white fullpage illustrations by Brett Helquist make a huge contribution to the novel's atmosphere.
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