Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2025 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

BOOKED AND BUSY Hi, Everybuggy! I am a bit overwhelmed because I got many new books (at least seven in various lengths), and I have two new books that I got at a bookstore and another that my mom gave me and still another that I got from “Cricket Readers Recommend” (Uprooted in the January 2025 issue of Cricket). My parents say that I need to read all my new books before I can get any more. I love reading and I am hyperlexic (a condition that allows me to speed-read), so it should be somewhat easy, but it’s still a lot. I don’t have much else to say, so I’m going to end this letter with a quote from one of my writing idols, Dr. Seuss: “Fill your house…

De a searcher and an explorer. This is the advice, said E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) in his 1994 autobiography, Naturalist, that he would give to his science students. “If you have the will, there is a discipline in which you can succeed.” Wilson should have known. A native of Alabama, the fiercely intelligent, prizewinning entomologist, or scientist who studies insects, lived a dream. He did so by following a passion—one that he discovered at the ripe old age of seven. As he explains in his autobiography, it began with a hunt for “monsters.” It was the summer of 1936, and young Wilson was living at Paradise Beach, a small settlement on the east shore of Florida’s Perdido Bay, near Pensacola. One day, while standing in the shallows, he discovered a…

THERE ONCE WAS a lad named Paddy Ahern who trod the green hills of Limerick, Ireland, offering to help farmers with their chores in return for food and lodging. Trudging uphill and down over the country roads, day after day, wore Paddy’s shoes so thin that sometimes he wondered if he shouldn’t have apprenticed to a shoemaker. But that would have been inside work, and Paddy preferred fresh air and sunshine. Young Paddy was slight of build but strong. He had a pleasant face, though his short brown hair, which he cut himself, stuck out here and there under his cap. His tweed jacket may have been a mite small, but Paddy kept it clean, taking care to brush off the dust at the end of each day. In spite…

WINNERS MARCH/APRIL 2025 MUSE MENU CONTEST CHEF FOR A DAY Honorable Mention Audrey G.-M., age 11, California; Elowen E., age 10, Oklahoma; Rohan S., age 11, Alberta, Canada. WINNERS MAY/JUNE 2025 CRICKET STORY CONTEST WEATHER WOES Erika D., age 10 South Carolina I’ve seen a lot of fish in my time. I snorkel to collect and sell conchs. I surf because I love the waves. My dad’s a fisherman, and I fish with him a lot, and my mom cooks fish in her restaurant. I’ve seen fish on plates, beaches, hooks, and in the water but never in the sky, until today. . . . Miami and hurricanes go together like peanut butter and jelly. I’ve sat in a hurricane shelter many times, but never did I think it would…

>> GENETIC ENGINEERING Scientists Create New Animals Resembling Extinct Dire Wolves The dire wolf was a large wolf species that could be found living in the Americas, from what is now Venezuela in South America to Canada. This species went extinct, or died out, about 12,500 years ago. In recent months, scientists at a biotechnology company in Texas announced that they have produced three animals that possess characteristics of the dire wolf. Born last fall and winter to different mothers, the wolves are named Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. The scientists collected surviving DNA, or genetic information, of the dire wolf from a 13,000-year-old fossil tooth discovered in Idaho and part of a 72,000-year-old skull found in Ohio. They compared this ancient DNA to the genomes, or complete sets of genes,…

An adult African elephant consumes about 3,080 pounds (1,397 kilograms) of roots, grass, fruit, and bark, as well as 238 quarts (225 liters) of water daily. That’s like scarfing down 400 large pizzas and 634 bottles of water every day. Their appetites keep them moving thousands of miles across Africa each year. But ivory poachers, war, fenced farmland, and roads can disturb their regular migration patterns. BOARDING PASS Elephants usually migrate each year between March and May. Males, or bulls, and females, or cows, have different reasons for traveling. Females live in herds with their offspring, and they quickly exhaust the food supply around them. So, they hit the trail in search of food. Male elephants live alone, which means they don’t use their resources as quickly as the females.…

A record-breaking march in U.S. history took place on August 28, 1963. It was a Wednesday, but that didn’t stop about 250,000 Americans from gathering on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The one-day demonstration included members of civil rights groups, churches, synagogues, trade unions, fraternal organizations, and women’s clubs. Movie stars, novelists, and politicians also participated in the event. “It was a day to be remembered,” one commentator said. “Never had so many organizations . . . joined together in such a massive demonstration. . . . Never had such a cross section of the American people been united in such a vast outpouring of humanity.” Officially known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the demonstration captured the nation’s attention. Its message has been preserved through…

Timbuktu has become synonymous with a faraway place at the end of the world. In reality, it is a city in the country of Mali in West Africa. It lies at one end of an important trade route across the Sahara. For many centuries, the Tuareg people of North Africa have traveled across this famous desert, sometimes with as many as 20,000 camels in their caravans. The Tuareg have been known as semi-nomads—people who move great distances from one season to the next. They trade with the people they often find living at oases, which are spots in the desert where fresh water is available. In the past, they traveled about 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) from Timbuktu to Kano, Nigeria. They established a trade network in North Africa, providing the…

“THEM BOYS GOT magic in their feet,” Momma said, leaning out the window while I sat on the fire escape. “You best come inside now, Eugene, and help me shell these peas. I wish God’d saw fit to put magic in your feet, but he didn’t, and I won’t have you frettin’ over something you can’t change.” I hated when Momma said that. Why’d God put me in Harlem, right ’cross the street from the Savoy Ballroom, if he didn’t want me to dance? Why’d he have me born with an achy leg just to fill my heart with rhythms I could never express? I crawled in through the window, but my thoughts were still on the boys and girls down on Lenox Avenue. They had nothing but their own…

Catherine Amoroso Leslie studies shoes, clothes, and accessories throughout history. Fashion designers, both past and present, are problem solvers, she says. They engineer creative solutions to challenges and changes in culture, communication, and the environment. They create beautiful and useful things out of what’s available at the time. Leslie has been a faculty member at the Kent State University Fashion School in Ohio since 2002. She has won distinguished teaching awards from the school’s Alumni Association and the College of the Arts, as well as the International Textile Association. She has written articles and books on such subjects as fashion history, women’s culture, and merchandising. Among other things, she explores what we can learn about the problems and solutions in cultures through history by exploring their clothes. WHAT PROBLEMS WERE…

Tomorrow is Halloween, and you have the perfect creepy haunted house set up. But after you go outside to set out your newly carved jack-o’-lanterns, you notice a problem. Your skeleton is all mixed up. Some fiendish ghoul took apart all the bones and left them in the wrong places. But this ghoul seems to know a lot about bones. It left a label on each bone with its scientific name, along with a piece of paper listing curious facts. Use these clues to match each bone to the part of the body where it belongs. Can you fix the skeleton before your friends show up for the haunted house? 1 SCAPULA If you were a bat, a pair of these flat bones would help you flap your wings. 2…