Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

“Winter Filigree” acrylic on paper Leonid Gore is an award-winning artist, illustrator, and author. Born and raised in Belarus, he studied art at the Academy of Arts in Minsk. Since 1990, he has been living in the United States. Leonid’s illustrations have graced more than thirty picture books, five of which he also wrote. Critics have praised his work as “visually stunning” and “brilliant.” His books have been honored as IRA Children’s Choice books and Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year; have received starred reviews from the School Library Journal and the Kirkus Reviews, Boston Globe, and Horn Book magazines; and have been recognized as part of 100 Great Children’s Books by the New York Public Library. Leonid Gore lives in Oakland, New Jersey, and works out of his…

My fingers fly to lace up tight.I need to practice, get it right. I wibble-wobble, stroking slow.Three times around the rink I go. I strike a pose, and then I skatea sloppy, crooked figure eight. I do some jumps. I try a spin.I fall, get up, and try again. Another skater’s on the rink.She’s a professional, I think. She moves with grace and jumps with ease.There are no Band-Aids on her knees. I sigh and wobble, slip and slide.One day, some day, I will glide.…

FOR A MOMENT Jeff lay confused. He couldn’t figure out what had awakened him. He coughed. He coughed again. There was a tight, suffocating feeling in his chest. As he pulled himself groggily from the last remnants of sleep, he became aware of an acrid, burning smell and a shrill, piercing noise. His eyes were watering, the insides of his nostrils stinging. Then, suddenly, he was wide awake. His room was full of smoke! The noise he was hearing was the smoke alarm. The house was on fire! He leaped from the bed but collapsed onto the floor, choking. He lay there, trying to catch his breath. “Stay low.” The words from their school fire drill came back to him. “The smoke is least dense near the floor. Crawl. Don’t…

The bugs were fascinated by the beautiful fashions created by Ann Lowe in “She Dreamed of Dresses.” Ladybug has already pulled out her needle and thread to design a new baseball uniform for Sluggo, complete with pink bows. Cricket looks very elegant in his new top hat and tails (he always wanted a tail). And Tater is filling his sketchpad with futuristic designs for technologically advanced “smart clothing.” For this month’s contest, everybuggy would love for you to make a bold fashion statement with your best drawing of a clothing design. Maybe you will present your fantastic idea for a popular new fashion that will sweep the nation. Or you might be interested in clothes people wore in the past—perhaps a cool design that’s gone out of fashion, like the…

While restoring the artwork in the temple of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, Pei, a poor young artist, sees the daughter of the new governor general, Yu-lan. Struck by Yu-lan’s beauty, Pei secretly sketches her portrait and composes a short love poem alongside it. A sudden breeze blows the sheet of paper across the room to where Yu-lan finds it. Pei and Yu-lan fall in love, but Pei is just a commoner, an unknown artist who has yet to pass more than the first level of imperial examinations. To win her hand, Pei must accomplish three tasks devised by Yu-lan’s father, who is intent on seeing Pei fail. Pei’s first task is to defeat a massive wrestler in “a fair fight.” Pei’s wit saves the day—and any broken bones—when he…

I SKATED TO center ice, set my toe pick to anchor me to the spot, and posed in the opening attitude of my program—hands on hips, eyes tilted up to look at the hockey banners hanging from the ice arena’s grimy ceiling. I smiled playfully as part of the choreography of my program, but I didn’t have to fake a smile today. I felt it! Not the eyes of my skating friends as they leaned on the rail of the bleachers above me. Not the eyes of my dads as they pretended not to be concerned. And certainly not the eyes of the judges wrapped in fleece in the hockey box across from me, looking like they’d run screaming for the hills if they heard the soundtrack to Annie one…

AT THREE O’CLOCK on the morning of May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, an enslaved man working for the Confederate army, risked his life and those of his crew and family. He ordered the sidewheel steamer known as the Planter to fire up its boilers. Robert had piloted the ship many times from its mooring in Charleston Harbor under orders from Confederate Captain Charles Relyea. But this time, only slaves were on board. Captain Relyea and his officers had disobeyed orders and gone to spend the night with their families. The crew had been waiting for this opportunity. Months before, in a playful moment, one of the crewmen had dropped Captain Relyea’s hat onto Smalls’s head. This innocent joke gave Smalls an idea. Since his short, stocky build was similar to…