Thoughts on Criss Cross
by Lynne Rae Perkins
2006 Newbery winner
Opinions of this book have been mixed, but I liked it. I have never felt much need for plot. I think one of the great things about fiction or any other creative medium is that there are no hard and fast rules. It's whatever the creator wants it to be. Whether that thing appeals to anyone else is another matter, of course!

I saw this book less as a story and more as a pleasant collection of lovely and humorous insights interwoven through the daily lives of some characters. (Though I did suspect part of the impetus for the book may have been to give the author a chance to share many of the insightful observations and questions she'd come up with at one time or another.) And as a plot-challenged author, this book gave me hope that tight plot isn't necessary for success! I keep being told to sharpen my plot & raise the stakes, & I'm working on it, but this book had almost no plot whatsoever & almost no stakes whatsoever, and yet I think it worked. I feel that it took more time to linger and study individual moments in ways we often overlook, the way a poem or painting might.

This book never compelled me to keep reading it the way a suspenseful book might. I put it down for quite a while without feeling a huge tug to get back to it. But I found it pleasant reading, and kind of put me in a pleasant mood, and I did at least want to know if the characters' stories would ever intersect more, or what would happen with the necklace. As the book went on, I was more & more amused to find the recurring references to bits & phrases from previous parts of the story, showing you how everything was interrelated, and to note the word "crisscross" appearing every now & then.

The omniscient narrator was appealing to me, especially when it got out of a character's head long enough to make a statement like "She was mistaken in thinking that's what it would take, but she was thinking it." I didn't feel like it jumped around too much, though. An omniscient narrator can bounce back & forth between characters' heads in the middle of a conversation, and I find that jarring, but in this book that didn't happen. It seemed to drift lazily from character to character, staying in each character's head exclusively for a little bit and then moving on. It all had sort of a dreamy feel to me.

I think this book might appeal more to adults than to teens, because we are seeing these things with a distance I think may be needed. Kids may relate to all the feelings and experiences in the book, and yet they may not find those things significant in the way that I think an adult may. I read it nostalgically and almost wistfully, understanding things now that weren't clear to me at that age, and/or that wouldn't have meant that much to me until I looked back at my life knowing how it all fit together and how I'd feel about my youth as an adult.

I liked the ending (after a brief twinge of disappointment), and I thought that it was the part that might resonate most for a young reader--a message they'd need to hear more than I would, because I can't do as much with it at my age. I can no longer embrace the life in front of me and all the mistakes that "would have to be made" as fully as a young teen can and should! Considering that my all-time favorite book at age 13 was A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle, I suspect I would have liked this one, too, as both books are contemplative (in different ways--this one is much lighter and funnier) and I came away from both with a similar message, about being open to life.