Lynne Rae Perkins

Who is Lynne Rae Perkins?

Lynne Rae Perkins is an American writer and illustrator of children's books.

Her novel Criss Cross, winner of the 2006 Newbery Medal, is a book of vignettes, illustrations, photographs, and poems about a group of four small-town teenagers.

"Writing in a wry, omniscient third-person narrative voice, Perkins deftly captures the tentativeness and incompleteness of adolescence", said Award Committee Chair Barbara Barstow. "In 38 brief chapters, this poetic, postmodern novel experiments with a variety of styles: haiku, song lyrics, question-and-answer dialogue and split-screen scenarios. With seeming yet deliberate randomness, Perkins writes an orderly, innovative, and risk-taking book in which nothing happens and everything happens."

Perkins' picture book Home Lovely was a runner-up for the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. Her novel All Alone in the Universe was named an ALA Notable Book, a Booklist Editor's Choice, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book, and a Smithsonian Magazine Notable Book for Children.

Perkins was born and raised in Cheswick, Pennsylvania, a suburb fourteen miles northeast of Pittsburgh in the Allegheny River Valley. She earned her B.A. at The Pennsylvania State University in 1978 and her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1981. She currently lives with her husband and two children in Suttons Bay, Michigan.