Debbie wished something exceptionally exciting would happen to her--a normal, average girl living in a boring, old city. Hector, the other main character, wants to learn how to play the guitar and impress a girl named Meadow. There are a few different characters that are the narrator in this story and each is very similar to the other. They sit in Lenny’s dad’s old pickup truck a lot and listen to a show called Criss Cross on the radio. Debbie has lost her necklace and it gets passed along to each character until it finally ends up being given back to her. Criss Cross mainly tells about the life of these teens through each one’s own perspective.
Criss Cross was a pretty good book but it didn’t really seem like there was a main focus to it. It mostly seemed like the author, Lynne Rae Perkins, just wrote this HUMONGOUS story to tell about some events that happened in these teens’ lives. I thought it was really neat how the author added extra things like haikus, poems, songs, and pretty detailed pictures to help you visualize what was occurring at that time. I think that the characters and their personalities weren’t really described well enough though. The characters were pretty much static (unchanging) and it was kind of hard to tell who the narrator was at times because they were so identical. I also think that there were definitely TOO MANY people involved in this novel. Criss Cross was written by Lynne Rae Perkins and is a Newberry honor book.
Rating (0 - 10 scale): 7
Reviewer Age: 13
Reviewer City, State and Country: Upper Strasburg, PA United States
