Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2022 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

“Whale of a Day” digital (Procreate) Born in Taiwan and raised in Yamaguchi, Japan, illustrator Jui Ishida studied art at Art Center College of Design in California. The winner of several awards in both illustration and graphic design, Jui has also gained the appreciation of young fans through her artwork in such books as God Created by Mark Francisco Bozzuti-Jones, The Silver Moon by Jack Prelutsky, and Animal Stories: Heartwarming True Tales from the Animal Kingdom by Jane Yolen. Jui loves rainy days, especially since it’s a rare occasion in Long Beach, California, where she lives. She also enjoys gardening, fixing things, and cooking (also eating) yummy food.…

Part 1 Rosica’s Perspective OF ALL THAT I lost when we moved to America, my personality is what I missed most. Not lost in a forever kind of way, perhaps just misplaced, because after I had a friend, it began to show up again. In Mexico, I knew the language well enough to easily understand and make jokes. And though I had missed my dad, who was thousands of miles away from us working long hours and sending home his money, I was in the habit of laughing hard and often, with my friends as well as Mom, Abuela, and my brothers. Then, when I was seven, we moved to North Carolina to join Dad. It was good to see him every morning and every evening. He was so happy…

Growing up in a small town has got to be different from growing up in the city, but I don’t know exactly how. I’ve never lived anywhere else but this small town, and I’m eleven years old. The rest of the family is fine with living in Luverne, Minnesota, but I keep thinking there is a strange wrinkle to living here. My folks just think I’m strange. Most parents are always on their kids about not leaving the yard, or wandering the neighborhood, or going any place by themselves. But Mom’s rule is we can go almost anywhere if my older sister, Esther, and I stay together. Her other rule is not to go down to the dump. “There are rats in that dump, and their teeth are longer than…

I’M SITTING IN the back of a Chevy van somewhere in Nebraska, staring at the meanest-looking weather I’ve ever seen. “See that, Emily?” Dad points as he speeds toward the greenish underbelly of a monster cloud. “That’s the laboratory for a tornado.” “Really?” I gulp down a throat full of fear. Actually, I should be used to the T word. Dad and I have been looking for tornadoes all week. He opens his window now, hangs his head out, and searches the sky. Then he points across a wheat field. I follow his finger and see a ragged chunk, dark as midnight, extend from the monster cloud. “What is it?” I ask, trying not to sound worried. “A tornado forming,” Pop murmurs, sounding awe-struck. “You’re kidding, right?” I lean toward…

EARLY IN THE evening of December 6, 1944, citizens of Thermopolis, Wyoming, spotted something unusual in the sky. They watched the “alien mechanism” drift for a moment. Suddenly, glowing red lights erupted from it. Seconds later there was a whistling noise. Then a deafening explosion echoed through the town. The sheriff rushed to the scene, where he found fragments of a bomb. Days later a local newspaper concluded that an American warplane had accidentally dropped part of its payload. But there was no plane, and the explosion was no accident. The mysterious blast was part of a top-secret Japanese World War II mission code-named Project Fu-Go. American military investigators got their first hint about Project Fu-Go a few weeks before the Thermopolis explosion. In early November a navy patrol ship…

Dea is convinced that her house is filled with gremlins that hide in the shadows behind the sofa, somehow avoiding the vacuum cleaner when her mom sweeps up the dust balls. Dea’s cat, Dreamboat, avoids the living room, and many things have gone missing from Dea’s house. The gremlins are mischievous creatures, leaving gum wrappers on the floor, even tearing up Dea’s homework, for which Dea’s mom blames her. Their favorite trick is to steal her mom’s socks on washday. Dea tells her mom that these misdeeds are the work of gremlins that she is too old to see, but, of course, her mom does not believe her. She whispers to Dea’s teachers, “This is what happens when parents get divorced.” One night, Dea’s friend Kat sleeps over. Hoping to…

SALMA PICKED HER way along the shore, holding her nose against its rotten-egg smell. Her flip-flops made a loud squelching sound. As her foot slid on slimy green goo, she flailed her arms to steady herself, but landed with a splat. With a groan, Salma cupped her dirty hands around her face, making sure not to get mud in her hair. She squinted until the scene almost resembled a paradise—like the one she pictured when her mom said they would get to live by the water. A paradise with rippling waves and sand. Seashells and dolphins. A magical place to help counteract the sadness of leaving her friends and her home in the city. But when she dropped her hands, she again saw the gloomy warehouses and factories surrounding the…

Droopy eyes in the backseat watching stars slide past in the night going home Mom snores in the front seat, my brother’s head leans silent against the window. Only Dad and I are awake to see how the night tastes how the trees blacken purple skies and tiny lights blink far off to the side of the road ahead, stretching dark and wide under the cool drink of sky sweeping us forward past sleeping ones in their beds and dimmed front porch lights and the silence that is full of singing.…