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

“HEY, YOU—WATER BOY!” I trudge along the lines of men working. Clang, crash, clang! Their heavy sledgehammers slam down on the rails in a steady rhythm. The wooden pole across my shoulders digs into my skin, and the pails of water hanging on each end feel like they are made of stone. Sweat drenches my shirt. I squint through the dust and glaring sun, and hurry toward the harsh voices calling. My name is Li Min Wei. It means clever, and also powerful. But these days, I do not feel I’m either one. I am from China, but I’m very far from home. My father and I left our village. We left behind my mother and brothers to come to this place called Utah. Back home, people told us amazing…

CAPTAIN INMAN SEALBY stepped onto the bridge of the Republic and peered into the gray gloom. It was 5:30 a.m., January 23, 1909, and the 585-foot luxury liner was steaming 50 miles off Nantucket Island, headed for the sunny Mediterranean. But first Sealby had to steer his ship safely out of the foggy Atlantic. Sealby tried to scan for ships, but it was no use: the fog was so thick that he could barely see his own boots. So he closed his eyes and listened. A whistle echoed in the distance. That was no surprise. This dangerous stretch of sea was so busy that sailors called it the Times Square of the Atlantic. Usually ships traveling east and west stayed on opposite sides of Nantucket Lightship, a safe distance of…

DO YOU GET tired carrying all those books to and from school? Well, don’t groan too much. In ancient Sumer, a part of the Middle East we now call Iraq, young people had it a lot harder. Yes, they went to school 5,000 years ago, too. But, instead of books, they carried armloads of clay tablets. Talk about heavy reading! Since they didn’t have pencils or pens, they used sharp sticks to scratch their lessons on the tablets. The Sumerian alphabet didn’t look at all like ours. It was mostly triangles and straight lines. You might think a couple of chickens had gone disco dancing on the clay. Scholars have spent lifetimes figuring out that alphabet and translating the mysterious script. They’ve discovered some of the earliest poetry ever written,…

Dear Cricket, I have been getting your magazine for a little over a year. My mom asked me if I wanted to stop getting it, and of course I said no. How could I not? It’s one of the best magazines ever! I love literature, so when I first heard about Cricket, I freaked. High-five to all reading and writing “nerds” out there! Lacie D. (January 2019), I love Harry Potter and Echo, too! I would recommend The Eighth Day series and the Percy Jackson series, if you haven’t read them. Lizzy (April 2019), I’m a huge Harry Potter nerd. I wish it were real! I’m a Ravenclaw, according to a test, but personally think I’m nowhere near smart enough. Experiment: I put this letter in the mailbox on April…

First prize 10 and under Ayat Jaffar, age 9 Avon, OH Helping Out Over winter break, I went to Umrah. Umrah is an Islamic Pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. I went with my mom, dad, and older sister. We went around a big black stone and between two big mountains seven times each in memory of Prophet Abraham and his wife. Our family and other families who had also come all the way from the United States were all set to do Umrah. We each got our own headphones so we could stay in contact with our religious leader, who would guide us in prayers. Suddenly, I saw a mother and her son looking very sad and gloomy. “What’s wrong?” I asked them. They explained to me that they…

“GRANDDAD?” I KEYED the hand-held radio, facing away from a blustery wind. “Weather’s turning. I’m heading down. The bear rub’s all I’ve got.” I released the talk button. I’d hoped to relay some creative story idea—or maybe, for old-time’s sake, a cool wildlife sighting Granddad might sketch. But a measly black bear rub on a ponderosa pine wasn’t likely to inspire either. I sighed. Normally, Granddad’s need to observe wildlife permeated our every moment together. But normal ended last fall. We’d become a team during annual summer hikes in these Idaho mountains, Granddad’s artistic eye turning an observed wild animal into a whimsical sketch. Around alpine campfires we’d spin possible storyline and illustration ideas based upon that sketch. Before week’s end, a new, very rough but humorous picture book would…

To create her stunning illustrations, Else relied on William Beebe’s descriptions of what he saw through the window of his bathysphere. She longed, however, to descend beneath the waves herself and observe her subjects in real life. Beebe would never allow her to descend in the bathysphere, considering it far too dangerous for a single mother with a teenage daughter. Instead, he offered Else the heavy copper diving helmet he had once used for descents into shallower tropical waters. A rubber hose, attached to one end of the helmet, supplied fresh air from the surface above and would allow Else to stay underwater for extended periods of time. With the sixteen-pound helmet resting heavily on her shoulders, Else held on tightly as she lowered herself down a swaying forty-four-foot rope…