Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2019 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

“KEE-AAH! KEE-AAH! KEE-AAH! “Gulliver’s back!” Katie’s first morning at Uncle Ralph’s Seaview Resort was always the same. When she and her dad arrived, the huge one-legged gull showed up, too. On the day they left for home, Gulliver disappeared as well. “It’s amazing,” Uncle Ralph said. “I’d swear that bird knows your holiday plans.” It had happened every summer . . . until now. Katie waited for Gulliver’s familiar, raucous wake-up call. Instead, she heard sparrows arguing in the bushes beside the cottages. She heard fishing boats chugging away in the morning mist. She heard wavelets slurp-slop under the wooden docks. She didn’t hear Gulliver. “Maybe he missed the ferry,” Dad teased. “I bet he found a new girlfriend,” said Uncle Ralph. Katie pushed the cereal around in her bowl.…

First prize 10 and under Claire Crighton, age 9 Lancaster, MA I Am a Surfer First prize 11 and up Willow Shields, age 12 Landenberg, PA Flying Fido First prize 10 and under Amelia Tiemann, age 10 Roswell, GA The Long Necks Second prize 10 and under Charlotte Moore, age 10 New York, NY The Rainbows Second prize 10 and under Kennedy Turocy, age 10 East Berlin, PA Bermudian Talent Show Second prize 11 and up River Shields, age 12 Landenberg, PA Cat Stack Third prize 10 and under Amy Rauenzahn, age 10 Sunnyvale, CA Mice Dance Third prize 10 and under Alice Craig, age 8 New York, NY Third prize 11 and up Maria Kroger, age 12 Wooster, OH The Gifted Honorable Mention Caleb Anderson, age 9, Cincinnati, OH…

Fourteen-year-old Will slips on a life jacket, shoves the boat away from the dock, and quicksteps onto the bow. He takes two strides to the back of his boat, tilts the prop of the fifteen-horsepower motor into the water, flips a switch, and with a yank of a cord, the engine snaps to life. It’s 6:20 a.m., and he heads east on Rainy Lake for work. He squints at the orange-pink sky that fades into a light blue. Sunglasses slide over his eyes as the boat skips across the mirror lake surface and the engine whines. Grass-green patches of wild rice and cattails line the coves and bays. Goldeneye and mallard ducks paddle out of his way. Loons with babies on their backs laugh at him, and bald eagles glide…

THE KING’S HIGHWAY was dark and dangerous on the night of July 1, 1776 as a lone rider on horseback, wearing his hat low and a scarf to cover part of his face, galloped through the darkened countryside. Guided only by flashes of lightning, the rider and horse raced across slippery bridges, through rain-swollen streams, and sleeping towns. The rider feared that the sound of the horse’s hoofs on the cobblestone streets would awaken someone, but loud claps of thunder covered the noise, and not even a watchdog noticed them. Though the rain came down in torrents, the rider and his mount barreled through it. The man leaned forward in his saddle and whispered to the horse. Feeling the urgency in his master’s voice, the horse stretched its legs, running…

Hello! My mom got me a Cricket subscription for my birthday, and I’m really liking it! I have eight brothers and two sisters. I really love reading and swimming and baking. Some of the books I enjoy are The Gates of Heaven series by C. S. Lakin, the Redwall books by Brian Jacques, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson, and the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling. By the way, I’m in Ravenclaw, and my Patronus is a hare. What books do all you bugs like? Book Dragon/Hermione Granger, age 12 Deer Park, Washington Oh, we like so many books! We could fill over two pages with the list, but then we wouldn’t have room for readers’ letters. So, I’ll just name a…

How does the ocean welcome you to the beach? It waves. Where did Cinderella get sand in her shoes? At a beach ball Why did the hot dog celebrate after the Fourth of July race? It was a wiener! What was the name of George Washington’s dog? Yankee Poodle Why do spiders play the outfield at baseball games? They’re good at catching flies. What kind of relatives don’t you want at a picnic? Ants Why did the rabbit sign the Declaration of Independence? For life, liberty, and the pursuit of hoppiness…

IN KYUNG JU, the Silla capital of Korea, there lived a queen. This queen was famous for her wisdom and kind rule—and her ears. They were as big as elephant ears. In fact, on hot summer days the queen would flap her ears faster than bee’s wings to cool the palace. Having such giant flappers wasn’t always good. No matter how much cotton she stuffed into them, the whisper of a single leaf drifting to earth echoed like temple bells in her enormous ears. Queen Minbe suffered such terrible headaches from the noises of the palace that it was difficult for her to think and rule wisely at times. There was but one place she escaped these noisy headaches—the palace garden at night. She would go there while her subjects…

FIFTY YEARS AGO, on July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon. They were aboard Apollo 11’s lunar module Eagle, a small spacecraft with soda-can thin aluminum walls designed by aerospace engineers to land upright on spindly legs. My friend Joseph Taylor tells me that, as Eagle descended toward the moon’s surface, an alarm flashed. The onboard computer had overloaded with data. Back in Houston, Gene Kranz, the NASA flight director in charge of the lunar landing, quickly consulted with his flight-control team and ordered the mission to continue. Margaret Hamilton, who coined the term “software engineer” to describe her work, had programmed the early model computer to complete its most important tasks first. Although alarms continued to flash…