Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2025 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

AS BEST AS I can recall, it all started when the cat sneezed. “Rain a-comin’,” said Granny. Now, that summer of nineteen-aught-eight was one of the driest in memory—even in Granny’s memory, and she was likely eighty years old. (I say likely because she never would admit to it.) “Rain?” I said. “There’s nary a cloud in the sky!” “Don’t matter,” said Granny. “A cat sneezin’ always means rain. My rheumatiz is worse’n usual, too.” “Yesterday,” said Daddy, “I seen one of the sows a-carryin’ a stick in her mouth.” Mama looked up from the bowl of peas she was shelling. “This mornin’ the coffeepot boiled over. Another sure sign of rain.” I sighed. “Them things got no basis at all in science.” I’d been going to school for a…

MY OLD FRIEND Will Shakespeare says, “All the world’s a stage.” I like to think that all the world’s an orchestra. I tried to write down all the musical instruments but ran out of paper before I got halfway through: violins, guitars, pianos, flutes, clarinets, trumpets, and dozens more, the ones we know best. But there are hundreds of other wonderful instruments all around the world. For example, the African finger piano, thin strips of metal on a small hollow box. The long-necked, guitar-like South Asian sitar. The Japanese samisen, a kind of three-stringed banjo. The Indonesian gamelan, a whole orchestra of gongs, flutes, drums, and xylophones. Giant bronze horns, some twenty feet long, played in the mountains of Tibet. In the Australian outback, you’ll hear a wind instrument that…

Hello, Everybuggy! This is my first time writing to the Letterbox, but I have been getting Cricket for over a year now. I absolutely love to read, and my school librarian loves to call me one of her avid readers. My favorite books are Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and many more. I’m usually a fiction reader. On the contrary, I also love science and math. I am aspiring to be an astrophysicist when I’m older. I’d love to help with all of the Artemis missions. Tater, what do you think about all of the wild technology advances right now? I am invested! Do you have a favorite astronomy mission right now? Even though I don’t read a lot of nonfiction, the NASA articles have been very interesting recently. I…

Kiyo, the daughter of the emperor, discovers the gate into the great forest closed one morning as she strolls through the palace woods. Her father explains that a kirin has wandered in from the great forest and that its horn possesses power to heal and bestow long life. He intends to hunt the kirin for its horn and commands Kiyo never to open the gate or the kirin will escape. Upset by her father’s plan, Kiyo is distracted at school. She is lonely, until she meets a student, Tekeshi, who also regrets that the kirin will be hunted. After school, Kiyo goes into the woods and calls to the kirin to warn it. The kirin comes to her, attracted by the pure tone of her voice, which it says is…

CRAAACKKKKK! Remember the sound of thunder—that ripping, booming crash that makes your bedroom window rattle? It’s usually preceded by a flash of lightning that dances across the sky. Have you ever wondered what a thunderstorm looks like up close? Really close? Can you imagine meeting a thunderstorm where it lives—in the clouds? One man did. And he lived to tell about it. Lieutenant Colonel William Rankin is called “the man who rode the thunder.” He was a U.S. Marine Corps pilot who served in World War II and in Korea. On July 26, 1959, while on a training flight over Norfolk, Virginia, something went terribly wrong with Rankin’s jet fighter. Its single engine shuddered, then stopped in midair. Warning lights flashed. The experienced pilot knew he needed to get out…

WINNERS FEBRUARY 2025 POETRY CONTEST Out of This World First prize 10 and under Cleo K., age 10Sunnyside, NY Stories Stories are little worldsThat have just beenTransformed into words People, places, and objectsHave all been wovenInto this intricate web Stories are a portal intoA mystifying dimensionWith much to see There are manyWays to easily getSucked into this alluringVortex of magic A story is justAnother word forA galaxy A galaxy of wondersAnd worlds threadedInto an intergalactic universe Stories are windows into theUnknown. A way to braveYour own adventures from theComfort of a . . . Story. First prize 11 and up Emily P., age 12North Granby, CT A Solar Eclipse A gold and scarlet sunIn the periwinkle sky,A normal day, until—What’s that? A splotch,A smudge of blackAgainst the yellow sunFlowing, continuing,Taking…