Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2017 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

I am an artist living in Connecticut. Fall is my favorite season, so I was very happy to be asked to make a picture about it for Cricket. I associate autumn with going back to school after a long summer break, so I thought I’d make the picture about that, too. The street I live on is across from a middle school and one block from an elementary school, so I often observe the parade of children in the morning. In my picture, it’s a squirrel in an oak tree that’s doing the watching while nibbling on an acorn. That’s my red house on the back cover!…

My life is filled with missing socksAnd missing keys to missing locksMissing mittens, scarves, and hats.Missing dogs and missing cats. I’ve missed the school bus quite a lot.Well, I was there, but it was not.I’ve missed my chair while sitting downAnd fell ker-thud, right on the ground. I’ve missed the point and lost my way;Misplaced what I was going to say.This “missing” list goes round and round;A lot of “lost,” but not much “found.” Likewise this poem, it cannot ceaseI’m searching for the missing pieceAnd yet, I’ve no more rhymes to lendBecause, you see, I’ve lost the end. . . .…

THE CLEAR AFTERNOON of October 19, 1899, outside Worcester, Massachusetts, burst with autumn color. Seventeen-year-old Robert “Bob” Goddard was scaling a homemade ladder to prune a spindly cherry tree. As his gaze shifted skyward, the possibilities of the coming twentieth century seemed to float in front of him. While home ill with bronchitis, Bob had been reading newspaper installments of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. In this science fiction novel, Martians journey to Earth in steel cylinders shot from a giant space gun. How fantastic would it be to travel to the Martians’ world! Bob thought. What might a spaceship that could take humans to Mars look like? How would it work? After climbing down from his perch, Bob kept on dreaming of space travel. “I was…

Diana was not a robot. She was nearly eight when she thought to question why she was not made of wires and mechanical parts. “Why am I so fragile?” she asked her mother, twirling her neatly braided black hair around one slender arm. “Why do I need to eat food and sleep at night, but my sisters do not?” Mother’s fan whirled quickly, as it did when she was faced with a difficult question that could not be answered with math or encyclopedias. “You are my daughter,” she finally said, in her low, monotone hum. “But you do not eat, and your batteries charge with solar panels, and you are strong and don’t bleed at all!” Diana stamped her little foot in a rare display of frustration. Mother’s chest panel…

TOM PERRY CONCENTRATED hard. The rocket competition would begin shortly, and he wanted to be sure he hadn’t left any detail unchecked. No possible glitch was too small to be ignored. Nothing could jeopardize his winning. He had never lost a contest, but that didn’t calm him. Being on top counted, and he pushed himself to remain there. The other kids, however, rarely came over to him. Whenever they did, it usually made him feel like they’d been forced to do it. No way, though, was he going over to them. He’d win again, and they couldn’t ignore that. He opened his toolbox. Pushing aside engines, igniters, glue, tape, and microclips, he pulled out the pieces of his launch pad and began assembling it. A shadow fell over him, and…

Audrey’s skirts rustled as she crept up the stairs. The wind outside the castle walls howled, and thunder boomed in the distance. Black sky glowered between heavy billowing curtains in the grand foyer below her. She wrapped her arms around herself, but with her bare feet pressed against the cold stone floor, the thick fabric of her gown did little to ease the chill. Her mother would have scolded her for lurking about without shoes, but Audrey hated the feeling of her feet bound. Of course, she was forced to wear pretty little slippers most of the time—it wouldn’t be proper princess behavior otherwise. Audrey smiled at the thought. Hmph! Proper princess. She reached the top of the stairs as a flash of lightning momentarily lit the main hallway before…

When he was a boy, Robert Goddard imagined rocket ships traveling through space—and his dream came true. Who knows what the future may bring? Tater loves to daydream about all kinds of fascinating scientific marvels that might make the future more fun—or more complicated. For this month’s contest, everybuggy would like to see your best story set in an imaginary Future World. Will you write about a world filled with flying cars and space travel, like in “The Flying Test”? Maybe you’ll imagine a future where humans and robots live together as friends, like in “The Girl Who Lived with Robots.” Perhaps you’ll write about a family vacation on the moon, or a new futuristic sport, or a kid going to Future World school with a substitute teacher who is…