book review

Book review:  Criss cross

Criteria	Rating	Comments
Plot	**	This book was kind of like a miss match book that the author just threw in random ideas to make the book move along when really, it made the book way more boring.
pacing	**	The book was like a snail with pages. It moved so slow and half the time i had no idea what was going on because the book was lagging along.
description	****	there were some nice descriptions and some cool comparisons.  this book  won a Newberry award but i don't think it was worthy at all.
realism	**	The teenagers portrayed in Criss cross were abnormal.  They didn't really do anything but sit around.   Most  teenagers actually do things like skateboard, go surfing and go over to their friends house and have sleepovers but these characters seemed fake and unreal.
Point of view	***	The point of view kept switching around so sometimes you didn't know who was talking.

Criss-Cross Book review

The book Criss-Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins in my point of view wasn't that good.  The plot line was weird and random things kept happening.  The things the teenage characters did were out of the ordinary for teen behavior like conga dancing contests.  The book is supposed to be about how teenagers find who they really are, when really, their trying to be mature but they end up seeming out of the ordinary.  Ordinary is a broad spectrum, but compared to the teenagers I know, these kids are strange.  

Criss-Cross was like a snail with pages.  The book went nowhere at all and when I finished the book I thought “is that it? nothing happened!”   It didn’t make much sense and as a result, sometimes I would find myself reading the same sentence over and over until I got what the author was trying to get across. When I am reading a book, I want it to have a good story. Who the story is told by really changes the plot.  The point of views in Criss Cross kept switching back and forth between the two main characters Hector and Debbie.  Although Hector and Debbie both have different lives and do different things without each other, they both have similar points of view about everything.  Even though the point of view was similar, it got confusing when it kept switching.  

Criss Cross is a Newberry award winner, mostly for description and nice imagery. I would have to agree that there was some sentences that painted pictures in my head.   The things that were described were simple things like the icing of a cinnamon roll or the dew on a blade of grass.  It was cool to see how the author incorporated  great detail in small things.  Some authors  just say “the water poured over her head” but Lynne Rae Perkins might say something like “ the icy water drizzled down her face and she squeezed her eyes shut, smearing a muddy colored mascara down her cheeks.”  I really like descriptive books so that was definitely a plus.

Over all, Criss-Cross was an okay book, it was slow but some of the nice descriptions paid off for the interesting plot and sluggish pace.  I have heard of some other books by Lynne Rae Perkins and people have even suggested them to me so i think I’ll give her another try.