Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens April 2017

Hello, dear reader! My name is Susan Farrington, and I have been an illustrator for many a year. My favorite things to work with are vintage papers, paint, found objects, fabric, thread, pen and ink, and many other materials too numerous to mention. My illustration for this issue of Cricket was inspired by my love of insects. They come in so many shapes, sizes, and colors! When I was young, I had a toy called the Thing Maker. It was a metal mold that you heated and poured goo into to create insects and a variety of other items. I’m sure this toy helped to inform my way of making art!…

Dear Cricket, Your mag is so cool. I love reading the stories. My sister and I live on three-and-a-half acres. On our farm we have one cow, one sheep, twenty chickens, four dogs, and three cats, and we grow almost all our own food. My sister and I write a newspaper called Speecher Times. We send it to people in Maine, New York, and all across Washington, where we live. We also sing at dances and parties and we are learning mandolin. We are homeschooled. Kellon Daniel Meneucci, age 10 Oso, Washington Dear Old Cricket and Cricket Media, I really like your magazines, but I don’t have time to read every story because I have dance on Sunday and Tuesday and school Monday through Friday. I mainly read the comics,…

OUTSIDE, I AM called Felipe Alonso. But inside, I have a secret name. In the late afternoon, when the red clay tiles of our roof have been baked warm by the Lisbon sun, I scramble to the top and pretend I am king of Portugal. I survey my land to the south. From the rooftop, the Tagus River gleams like a blue satin ribbon dotted with the white sails of merchant ships. If I were king, I would not sit fat and happy in my palace on the hill. I would have my pick of the great caravels that crowd the port of Lisbon, and their tall masts would carry my banner of gold and red. Like Henry the navigator prince, I would explore distant lands, where birds of every…

In 1497, King Manuel I of Portugal ordered all the Jews in his kingdom—about 20,000 people—to convert to Christianity. Those who refused were baptized and converted by force. The king gave these “New Christians” twenty years to learn the ways of the Catholic Church and cast off their Jewish traditions. In reality many Conversos, or “converted ones,” as these Jews were called, continued to practice their religion in secret. They met in cellars or hidden rooms to pray and observe the Sabbath and other Jewish holidays such as Passover. They adopted secret symbols, gestures, and rituals to maintain their Judaism while outwardly appearing Christian. One of these practices was to have two names. While outside or in church, they used their baptized names. However, in the safety of their homes,…

When the sun goes down over its dull green canals, La Serenissima, the Serene City, rises in glory from the dust of crumbling facades. The light catches the gold of the dome of St. Mark’s. The palazzos’ lapis mosaics blaze blue as summer sky against the lace of ivory stone. The black gondolas, which worked the watery trails like armies of sluggish ants, soon are tucked beneath bright coverlets; they sway like turquoise and indigo blossoms in a breeze-tossed garden. Even the bridges sigh at dusk in the city dreamed by a lagoon.…

Murik trudged deep into the forest, where roots twisted like slimy stairways. He wanted to find enough herbs and berries to earn a few extra coins; his wife, Elgreth, had a birthday coming soon. In a dark ravine, moss covered lumpy rocks. Murik’s gray hair clung damp beneath his ragged hat. He was weary and about to sit and rest when one of the rocks shouted, “Help!” Murik stumbled backward into a patch of nettles. The rock was, in fact, not a rock at all but an ancient man cloaked in leaves. Moss grew in his beard and tufted eyebrows. He raised one knobby foot, and Murik saw that it was caught in a hunter’s steel trap. Opening his pack, Murik set to work with his root-cutting chisel. Soon the…