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Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins

Summary

Teenagers in a small town in the 1960s experience new thoughts and feelings, question their identities, connect, and disconnect as they search for the meaning of life and love.

Booktalk

Debbie's fourteen and feeling particularly dull and uninteresting. She likes boys, but she freezes up when she talks to them. Fortunately she has her old friends, Hector, Lenny, Phil and Patty, friends since childhood, to help her out of being uncomfortable. She has her neighbor old Mrs. Bruning to help when the woman's arthritis is acting up. And she has Mrs. Bruning's cute grandson to get to know in the midst of what turns out to be a particularly big emergency.

“It wasn't hard for Debbie to get her mother to go shopping. But Helen Pelbry was opposed to spending money on something that was going to drag on the ground and get ruined. ..Debbie, on the other hand, believed that it was the only way to wear pants that made any sense. That wearing the dragging jeans did not actually guarantee that good things would happen to you, but not wearing them could almost guarantee that the good things wouldn't. She felt sure that when she found the perfect pair, her mother would recognize their perfection and relent. But they weren't finding the perfect pair. They had been searching for hours, in every store in the…mall” (pg.45-46).

Finally Debbie heard herself saying, about the most hideous pair of all, a pair that was wrong in more ways than a person could have imagined: About this hideous pair, she heard herself say: “These are good. I really like these. In the instant she said it, she almost believed it. She wanted it to be true. If she could have spent her whole life in the tiny private dressing room, she might have worn those pants a lot.” P 48. But in real life, she'd probably have to leave the dressing room and be seen. Then there's Hector. Hector, in a burst of not wanting to consider himself roly-poly and dull too, is learning the guitar. He likes a girl who is also learning the guitar, but she seems to like someone else. If only he could get her attention. If only he had someplace interesting to take her. If only, if only…

337 pages, 6th grade and up

Discussion questions

Warning! Some of the questions contain key elements of the plot. Do not read if you don't want to know what happens!

  1. The book opens with Debbie making a wish and checking it for loopholes, remembering one time when she got her wish and it backfired. Do you have this fear? Have you had wishes backfire on you?
  2. When Debbie is trying on the hideous pair of pants, she finds these words coming out of her mouth: “These are good. I really like these. In the instant she said it, she almost believed it.” Have you ever had something like this happen? How does this happen?
  3. "He had started down a separate path . . . another path than the one his old friends were taking. It was hard to tell how far apart the paths would eventually veer" p63. What does this mean? How is Lenny's path different from those of his friends?
  4. On the cover it says “She wished something would happen.” Some people have criticized this story, saying that nothing much happens. Some people like that about it. What do you think?
  5. How does the unusual format help the story? Haiku, the chapter called Wuthering Heights? Popular Mechanics, the drawings.
  6. What do you think about Debbie's theory (pp282-283)? How would you explain it in words? How does it relate to the Spectrum of Connectedness at the beginning of the book?
  7. The setting of the book is somewhat vague. How do you think this helps or hurts the story?
  8. How do the characters change over the course of the summer? Debbie? Hector? Dan Persik? Lenny?
  9. Why do you think Meadow would prefer Dan Persik to Hector?

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