The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues

I discovered "The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues" after reading Raskin's more famous novel, "The Westing Game." While "Potato" isn't as intricately plotted, it still shows Raskin's masterful ability to hoodwink her readers even as she entertains them. Her books are never simple whodunits; they're a riot of red herrings and surprisingly deep characters that make it easy to miss what the actual mystery is. In "Potato," there are any number of obvious mysteries, as Dickory Dock and her employee Garson play detective to help the police solve crimes. These cases are presented almost as short stories, and while the reader doesn't have enough information to solve them on his/her own, they're still a lot of fun. The bigger mystery, though, is Garson, a shallow, vain, second-rate painter who shares his house with a pair of blackmailers and a deaf-mute he named Isaac Bickerstaff. It won't take sharp readers very long to guess at least some of Garson's secrets. The real heart of this book, like "The Westing Game," is that everyone's identity is a bit of a mystery. This book is filled with disguises, pseudonyms, and impersonations as Dickory struggles to learn who she really is, and who her companions are. The ending isn't as tidy as "The Westing Game," but it's surprisingly satisfying to see Dickory grow and become more comfortable with herself, as a person and as an artist. She even embraces her much-despised name. It's just a tragedy that this book is out of print. If you can find a used copy, snap it up! It's a great book for kids; this book was my first introduction to art, as well as the poetry of Christina Rossetti. It's even more fun now in the days of internet searches, because you can look up the artists they discuss and form your own opinions of their works. But it's also a surprisingly deep book for adults as well, and one that's sadly overlooked.

I was fortunate enough to read "The Tattooed Potato and other clues" a few times before my local library took it off the shelves. I absolutely love this book and it's still among my top five favorites though now that I'm older (and hopefully wiser) I've read a wider selection of profound and celebrated literature. I'm rathe saddened by the fact that I cannot find this book any longer even at the library.In this story, an art student by the name of Dickory Dock (a name that makes her cringe thanks to the inevitable puns with it) becomes an assistant to Garson, a mysterious and eccentric artist living in Greenwich village. Mysteries within a mystery is the best way to describe the events of this book-- Dickory and Garson begin solving cases for the police chief, acting as Inspector Noserag (Garson backwards, almost) and Sergeant Kod (Dock backwards, almost) as they deduce. 'Sergeant Kod' starts to form her own deductions as she gets to know the many faces of Garson and finds herself entangled in a bigger mystery.Highly recommended! I strongly urge you to read it should the oppurtunity presents itself-- it's hard to come by this great book now that it is out-of-print.

This is one of my favorite books. It's one of those books that you can read over and over again and not get bored of. Every time I read it, I find something else that I didn't see before. This book goes into a complicated plot including art, murder, and the past. I would recommend it to anyone.

It's a pity that this book is out of print. It's my favorite of Ellen Raskin's Mysteries for young people -- as intricate and unique as *The Westing Game* and *The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)*, but with a darkness and emotional richness usually off-limits in children's books. The story unfolds as a set of episodes, criminal cases which the slick, successful, and shallow New York painter Garson and his student assistant, Ms. Dock (who resents the first name given to her by her parents, "Dickory") undertake to solve at the special request of the Greenwich Village precinct police investigator. The Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson rapport that Garson and Dickory develop begins to unravel as some threatening signs emerge, involving a blackmailing ring working out of the first floor of the building that houses Garson's studio; the lurking presence, in the basement, of Isaac Bickerstaff, a hulking and crippled deaf-mute whom Garson shelters; and a police investigation of the disappearance and suspected murder of the master painter Edgar Sonnenberg. These signs lead to uncomfortable questions about Garson's obscure past, and Dickory finds herself pursuing her own investigation while attempting to keep the police at a safe distance. An unforgettable image from the book involves Dickory's discovery of a masterpiece by the painter Sonnenberg: it depicts a middle-aged woman dressed as a peddler, standing on a shadowy streetcorner before a city crowd whom she salutes mockingly with a banana, her head thrown back in wild laughter. Having read this book for the first time in the seventh grade, I can see that this image and others like it from Raskin's book were for me a first glimpse into a world of emotional shadings and moral ambiguities that we associate with Modernist art and literature. The mixture of tragic, grotesque, and comic elements sometimes falls short in its attempts to achieve these effects, but in its attempt to explore these feelings and the capacity of art to express them, the book proves itself to be more ambitious than many novels intended for adult readers, to say nothing of other children's books. Thinking about the book now, I still wonder how Raskin managed to invent the world it describes. It's difficult to think of anything else quite like it.

Garson and Dickory Dock search for clues. Includes a murder, blackmail, fraud, counterfeiture, and theft, plus much more.