Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

Great horned owls adapt to many habitats, living from the Arctic to South America, in deserts and swamps, in grasslands and woodlands. Great horned owls swallow their small prey whole, later regurgitating a pellet made of undigested fur, claws, feathers, skulls, and bones. The average great horned owl is about 20 inches tall with a 55-inch wingspan. The eyes of the great horned owl are too large to move in their sockets. Instead, an owl can twist its head 270 degrees to the left or right to see what’s around it. The pupils of an owl’s eyes can dilate to almost the full diameter of its eyeballs, giving owls keen night vision.…

This story is based on the myth of Arion, a famous Greek musician who was supposed to have lived around 600 BC. According to one ancient source, the song at the end was written by Arion himself, although its style suggests that it was likely composed several hundred years later. Around AD 150, the geographer Pausanias, who visited the temple of Poseidon at Cape Taenarum, said that the statue of Arion on the dolphin could still be seen. No one knows where it is now, but the dolphin that carried Arion to shore? Ovid said that it was turned into a constellation, Delphinus, and that you can still see.…

Lighthouse keeper Ida Lewis became famous for her lifesaving rescues. In Greek mythology, the great musician Arion was rescued from drowning by a dolphin. Nimbus in “The Finch” rescues herself and her friends from their classroom cage by learning to read. Even Papa G’Ho helps rescue injured owlets by teaching them what they need to know to be released back into the wild. For this month’s contest, everybuggy wants to read your best story about a remarkable rescue. Will you write about an ordinary person who unexpectedly comes to the rescue in a dangerous situation? Perhaps you’ll invent a fantasy about being rescued from a wizard’s spell, or a myth about defeating an angry dragon, or a science fiction story about a rescue that takes place on another planet. Maybe…

Not everyone considers their classrooms at night. When the bell rings, the final backpacks clear away, and the teachers wearily lock their doors and pull cars, headlights sweeping, from the lot, a school becomes a quiet, lonesome place. Dull, mute corridors contrast with the echoes of daytime shouts and chatter. Sinks in darkened bathrooms drip quietly, and solitary bits of trash drift listlessly over lunch tables in the dying evening breeze. The life of a school goes out with the sun. But in the darkened classroom with the number 268, there was a little sign of life. A small reminder of the animated day. A tiny bird, a finch, was hopping methodically across her cage. Room 268 was a science classroom, and the teacher who occupied it kept finches. She…

THE SKY, OF course, clouds over when it rains. But every once in a while, the sun shines even as rain is falling. When Japanese people see a sun shower, they say, “Look—the fox bride is going to her husband’s house!” Here’s why. Long ago, two fox families arranged for their children to be married when they grew up. But the families lived far apart, and the daughter and son never even saw each other—only the four parents had actually met. The fox-son’s parents were noble but poor and wanted to be paid a big dowry. The bride’s parents wanted their daughter to marry into a noble family so other foxes would look up to them. So the parents lied to each other. The son’s parents said he was handsome…

CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! Papa G’Ho puffs out his feathers and claps his beak. He’s angry. Get back, human! This baby is mine! CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! Baby owl puffs out its feathers and claps its beak, too. That’s right, human! Back off! Papa G’Ho, with his flattened “horns”—tufts of feathers that look like ears—is one grumpy owl. As a surrogate father he’s teaching the little owlet to be wary of humans. And that’s a good thing. Without this wariness, the baby owl, even when an adult, would not be able to survive in the wild. The owlet, patient #16-0097, was brought to the Wildlife Center of Virginia when it was about three weeks old. Loggers clearing trees had destroyed its nest. One of the loggers found the baby great horned owl,…

THOUSANDS OF YEARS ago, when Boreas blew against the ancient shores of Greece, there lived a musician whose renown was greater than that of any who lives today. His name was Arion, and he came from Methymna on the island of Lesbos. He sailed from island to island and traveled from city to city, playing in the courts of tyrants and kings and composing songs for the people. He sang while playing his cithara, which in today’s Greek means a guitar but back then meant a big wooden lyre. Arion’s main patron was Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, who was a plutocratic and superstitious man. In early spring, Arion left Corinth to tour the shores of Italy and Sicily, and Periander saw him off with his best wishes. For months,…

Fifteen-year-old Tay lives on Rannoch, a distant planet covered with water, where undersea pods or living chambers provide life support for up to three people—usually two adults and one child. Tay learns that her parents are expecting another child and that she must marry and move into a pod of her own. Upset, she thrusts her portable breathing tube into her throat vent and slams out of the pod. Swimming past the school, she remembers learning about the history of Planet Rannoch. One day the class viewed an ancient Video that showed the Survey Starship Macmillan arriving from Planet Earth. The starship smashed into a shock wave of radiation from the solar system’s sun and disintegrated. The lucky ones whose escape pods landed on the planet engineered underwater homes and…