Lynne Rae Perkins was awarded the Newbery Medal for Criss Cross. She is the author of one other book for teens—All Alone in the Universe, a companion to Criss Cross. Lynne Rae Perkins has also written and illustrated several picture books, including Snow Music, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book and a Book Sense Top Ten Pick. "Perkins is a genius at capturing the odd details that reveal so much about individuals and families, and how they interact," said Riverbank Review about her picture book The Broken Cat. The author lives with her family in northern Michigan.
PreS-Gr 4-This picture book begins and ends with a whisper of snow. In between, a lost dog, a boy, a girl, a deer, a rabbit, and a squirrel cross paths as readers follow their tracks through the vast white of the pages. The tracks are both textual and pictorial as they create meandering word patterns and paint pictures of footprints in the snow. From the "peth, peth, peth" of the falling snow to the "jingle, huff, jingle, huff-" of the runaway dog, the text sings. The written word becomes a choral reading with solo voices while the ink-and-watercolor illustrations add another dimension to the composition. On some pages the paintings add a hush to the music; on others they brighten the song. White backgrounds create a crisp cold day, while more colorful, painterly pages realistically picture the rural neighborhood. This title will harmonize well with Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day (Viking, 1962) and other wintry favorites.-Carolyn Janssen, Children's Learning Center of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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