Download Blue Balliett's full-color biography (PDF)

Blue Balliett’s first book, Chasing Vermeer, was a New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award winner, and won the Chicago Tribune Prize for Young Adult Fiction. It has now been translated into over thirty-five languages. The highly anticipated sequel, The Wright 3, was also an immediate New York Times bestseller and international success and was featured on NBC’s Today Show. Her third book about Calder and Petra, The Calder Game, was featured on ABC’s Good Morning America as a "sizzling summer read," and was a Publishers Weekly bestseller.

In her latest book, The Danger Box, Balliett introduces readers to a new cast of characters, and a new kind of mystery. Balliett says, "The Danger Box is a story set in a very small, very quiet town in Michigan, one that could be almost anywhere in the United States. A worn, red notebook appears, one that might or might not have belonged to one of the most famous and controversial thinkers ever, a person who has been dead for over a hundred years-and whose name is known around the world. Dangerous sparks are struck...and soon a boy, a girl and a way of life are surrounded by flames."

In Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, and The Calder Game, Balliett explored ideas and mystery through the lens of paintings, sculpture, and architecture. With The Danger Box, this engagement continues along other lines. Balliett explains, "Science is filled with as much controversy and as many questions as art. Also, the idea that so-called weaknesses can become strengths-that intrigues me. Are there also times when a physical disability can allow a person to accomplish things that others might not? I think this is an exciting question."

Blue Balliett grew up in New York City and studied art history at Brown University. Balliett and her family now live in Chicago, within walking distance of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House. She taught at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools before becoming a full-time writer.