Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that there is not much to worry about here. There is one instance of swearing, and a teen character uses chewing tobacco, which his friends find revolting.
Families who read this book could discuss the many little observations and insights in the book. How do people connect, or miss connecting? What are the moments that push our lives in a different direction? Is there only one person out there for each of us?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
CRISS CROSS is an intriguing book, absolutely deserving of major awards. It has few of the trappings of children's novels: no plot at all, an abundance of only slightly defined characters who are hard to tell apart or keep track of, no hero or protagonist or clear point of view, no action or suspense or mystery, just a touch of gentle humor. And yet ... it is a deeply lovely book, profoundly observant and wise about the little things in life that most books, children's or adult, ignore, or perhaps don't even notice.
So what keeps the pages turning? Hard to say exactly, but turn they do. Is it the gorgeous writing, the penetrating insights, the little bits of philosophy and keen observation? It's something of a little miracle, really -- the author spends three whole pages describing a boy looking at himself in the mirror, and it's almost impossible to put down. Below, for example, is a small part of the moment when Hector, listening to a guitarist in a coffeehouse, realizes he wants to learn to play.
Either this kind of thing grabs you, or it doesn't. For most kids age 10 and up, it won't. A few, those with a thoughtful or poetic or mystical bent, will find it enthralling. It will speak to them in the way the guitarist speaks to Hector. It will be like water through a sandstone cavern, like water on a dry sponge.
From The Book
He glanced over to see if Rowanne was paying attention. She was. She was paying so much attention that you could cut it with a knife. She was rapt. He looked at Liz. She was rapt, too. He looked at the musician again, who didn't look so ordinary anymore. His music had transformed him, or revealed a part of him that was plugged into the cosmic life force. A life force that seeped in, through, and under the music, like God in the Communion wafer. An everyday kind of life force, though, that could do this in a song about a chicken. More about earth than heaven. Also, girls really liked it.
These aren't words that Hector thought. He wasn't even thinking in words. He was having a satori, a mystical, wordless moment of understanding about Music and Life, including the subcategory of the look on Rowanne's and Liz's faces, that passed through him and altered the shape of his thoughts like water through a sandstone cavern. Like water on a dry sponge.
Plot Summary:
This book is about one 60s-era summer in the lives of an assortment of very nice small-town teens. Just like a real small-town summer for teens, not very much happens. Life is pleasingly slow and languid. They listen to the radio, wonder about the opposite sex and about themselves, hang out, talk, grow a little, change a bit, come to a few understandings they didn't have before.
That's pretty much it. One boy is inspired by a college coffeehouse to take some guitar lessons in the basement of the church. A girl befriends and helps out an elderly woman. Paths cross, connections are made, or missed. It's real life, lyrically rendered.
Related Books:
Other Books by Lynne Rae Perkins
All Alone in the Universe
The Broken Cat
Clouds for Dinner
Home Lovely
More Gentle, Plotless Stories
The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt by Patricia MacLachlan
Our Mountain by Ellen Harvey Showell
The Blue Hill Meadows by Cynthia Rylant
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate Dicamillo
Loser by Jerry Spinelli
Replay by Sharon Creech
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LanguageOne instance of s--t. |
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Social Behavior |
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CommercialismA soft drink brand is mentioned. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoA character uses chewing tobacco, which is depicted as being disgusting. |
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