''I don't really associate it with the color anymore,'' she said in a voice, slow and elegant, that is paired with an easy, down-to-earth manner.Īlthough by the time she was 8 she knew that she was a writer, Ms. Balliett, a tall, thin woman with long brown hair and bright hazel eyes that tend toward blue. ''I was named after the color of the sky,'' said Ms. It just seems tailor-made for an art-mystery book that is now available in 11 languages, thank you very much. Balliett says, the name has been hers for all her 49 years and came from her mother. So surely Blue Balliett is a pen name with a delicious story, a mystery maybe? No, Ms. If that wasn't heady enough, Warner Brothers just acquired the movie rights for the book, which was published by Scholastic. Newsweek called it ''The Da Vinci Code for Tweens.'' Balliett as a new writer off to a flying start. The Times also gave it one of many similarly superlative-studded reviews (''suspenseful, exciting, charming'') and Publishers Weekly recently picked Ms. When I get stuck I just ask myself, 'What do kids see? What are they capable of? What am I saying to them? And what do adults know, anyway?' Usually, that gets me back on track.Blue Balliett's first novel, ''Chasing Vermeer,'' a mystery about two South Side sixth graders searching for a stolen painting by the Dutch artist, sprinted onto the New York Times best-seller list soon after its May debut. The thought that I'm writing for children helps me tremendously. But the business of sifting and then capturing on paper is sometimes elusive –- and it's difficult not to wonder how your work will be judged. Writer's Block Regimen: 'I'm lucky, because I always have more ideas than I have places to put them. Such is life I like the thought that this isn't a likely place to write or think.' Now I have a table, and am surrounded by mountains of paper and the occasional runaway dish towel or t-shirt. During the five years it took me to finish Chasing Vermeer, I worked with a laptop on an extra bed that was always covered with a mountain of clean socks and blue jeans. How She Writes: 'I write as soon as I'm awake, and I work in the laundry room in our house. She lives with her family and cats in Chicago. Balliett graduated from Brown University with a degree in art history.

Her latest, The Wright 3, is a detective story that takes place in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Blue Balliett is the author of two novels for children.

Blue balliett books