Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins

I have been reading some articles about the Newbery Medal award winners for the past few years. It turns out that a lot of librarians are, shall we say, less than impressed by the books that have won the award recently: Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!; The Higher Power of Lucky; Criss Cross; and Kira Kira, to name a few. The librarians said they haven't bought the award winners for several years, because they haven't been books that children really enjoy. Well, I tried to get through Criss Cross, which won the award in 2006. Keep in mind that I RARELY start a book that I don't finish; in fact, I can think of only a handful over the years. I have to admit, I found Criss Cross to be so slow, so insipid, so -- I have to say -- boring that I finally just started skimming through it. I discovered that I hadn't missed a thing. I can't even tell you what it is about, except for a group of friends who do boring stuff over a summer. I have to agree with Anita Silvey and all those librarians; I don't see how this book could possibly interest kids enough to read it. I can't even imagine how the people on the Newbery committee came up with this book as an award winner. This is the same year that American Born Chinese and Octavian Nothing came out, but this book won the award.

What do you think about Newbery award winners, especially the recent ones?