Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman This book is about a boy named Bod (short for Nobody), who is protected by dead people in a graveyard from a bad man named Jack, who killed his family. As Bod grows up in the graveyard he has many adventures, like when he got captured by ghouls, saved by a Hound of God, and faced the Sleeer with his friend Scarlett. Will Bod get his revenge? It held me in suspense. Philip Padilla, age 10 Birmingham, Alabama A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness Conor O’Malley is angry because his mum is dying of cancer. A yew tree on a hill turns into a monster. The monster tells three stories to Conor. Conor has to tell the fourth story to the monster. It has…

Ghosts. Ghouls. Goblins. And . . . fairies? We don’t usually think of fairies as spooky Halloween creatures. However, if you traveled the streets of an ancient Irish village on the night of October 31, you’d hide from them! Halloween began with the Celts, who lived in Ireland over two thousand years ago. Back then, the holiday was an end-of-summer harvest feast called Samhain (pronounced SOW-en), a time when cattle and sheep were brought in to closer pastures and food stored for the winter. Samhain also marked the Celts’ New Year. On Samhain Eve, the Celts believed that the ghosts of the dead walked the earth as they crossed to the underworld, and that fairies and demons came out of hiding. The Celts spoke of fairies as the “good folk,”…

Hey, Everybuggy, I’m fairly new to Cricket and I love it! The reason I love Cricket so much is because there are so many new stories to read in every issue, and reading is something I love to do. Life without a good book is just boring for me. The Letterbox is my favorite section in your magazine. The cartoons are so funny! Ladybug is my favorite character. My absolute favorite book is Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger. When I find books, video games, etc., that I enjoy a lot, I like to create and draw new characters to add to the story line. When I am older, I really want to be an artist. My favorite hobbies are drawing, reading manga/fantasy (and Cricket), playing video games,…

EYE OF NEWT and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, scale of snake and lion’s mane, cockroach leg and . . . candy cane? It sounds strange to include the cool, fresh taste of a candy cane in with such a disgusting brew, but my good friend Mary Steinkamp tells me that the source of that taste, peppermint, has long been a part of herbal lore and folk medicine and that for many generations it’s been used for far more than making candy. Peppermint is an herb that, like oregano, basil, and parsley, has flavored food for thousands of years. Besides being used in candy, it’s popular in toothpaste, gum, and ice cream, and it makes a soothing tea. But that’s not all. Because of its…

AS HER NEW teacher began talking her class through the coming semester, Rin was far too excited to pay any attention. She stared out the window to the blackness of the skies, a single blue orb visible in the distance.  When she had seen the name Laila Langin on the class roster that morning, her mind had been transported to her childhood in Houston. She remembered humid air and the itch of freshly mowed grass on her skin as she and Laila raced around their favorite softball field. After years on Lunar Base 5, Rin had gotten used to seeing gray rock instead of green grass, but the separation from her best friend still stung. It was then that she felt the familiar tug on her ponytail, and she knew…

“...AND SHE SCREAMED so loud it woke up people across the river. And I’ve heard she’s screaming still—in the crazy house up in Chichester.” Dylan smirked at the satisfied glee on Gary’s face. Dylan had heard the story before. He called it “The Hook Horror” when he told it, but he appreciated Gary’s twist about the girl being in the local loony bin, just over the state line in Chichester. It made the story more familiar, more real. He wanted to top Gary’s tale, and he knew just the one, one of his dad’s. His dad wrote scary stories, and other ones about spaceships and magic. Normally, that would be awesome, but it also meant moving a lot, since paying the bills was tough when the stories did not sell.…

First prize 10 and under Priscilla Chow, age 7 Palmetto Bay, FL London First prize 11 and up Emilia Zeledon, age 12 Copperopolis, CA Deep in the Jungle First prize 10 and under Tang Li, age 8 Palmetto Bay, FL The Amazon Rainforest Second prize 10 and under Cleo Friedman, age 8 Miami, FL Making Mayan Chocolate in Belize Second prize 10 and under Willow Hartman, age 9 Denver, CO Holi in India Second prize 11 and up Violet Kent, age 11 Washington, DC Scotland Third prize 10 and under Tyler Rich, age 10 Grand Junction, CO Sunset in the Alps Third prize 10 and under Jiacheng Yu, age 6 Weston, FL The Rosetta Stone in Ancient Egypt Third prize 11 and up Jaslene Kwack, age 11…