Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

“TOUCH YOUR TOES! Bend your knees! Up and down!” Ernest grumbled bitterly. “Over and over and over again! Wouldn’t it drive you out of your mind?” Jimmie didn’t bother to reply as he stumbled along behind his brother on their way to the YMCA. It was just too cold to talk, this December day in 1891. Besides, Ernest was only complaining about his physical education class again. “Football,” Ernest went on, “is worth coming to class for. So’s baseball. But what can you do when the playing fields are frozen and covered with snow? You’re stuck in the gym, lifting dumbbells. One-two, one-two! What fun!” Jimmie was proud of his older brother, most of the time. Ernest had been only eighteen when their father died, and he’d been working hard…

SINCE ANCIENT TIMES, people have been fascinated by the ocean and its lure of discovery, trade, or power. The sea was the major highway between cultures for thousands of years, and countless sailors braved its winds and waves. So it’s not surprising that today our language is filled with words and phrases that originated with those adventurous souls who plied the great waterways. Until railroads were built, oceans and rivers were the most efficient way of moving raw materials and goods from one country to another. When sailors entered a foreign port, they had to present passes to identify themselves and get permission to land. Today, all travelers to foreign countries are required to carry passports whether they arrive by boat, plane, or land vehicle. Companies sent ships around the…

THE IDEA THAT girls can be athletes doesn’t seem strange to us today, but in ancient Greece, it was very unusual indeed. Middle- and upper-class women and girls rarely left their homes. They spent their days cooking, weaving, and running the household—and that was about all the running they did! But my friend Nancy Gordon tells me that they weren’t left out of the fun completely. While today’s athletic events are held for fun and glory, ancient games served as a kind of gift to the gods and goddesses, a way of worshiping them. Girls weren’t allowed to participate in the ancient Olympic Games, which were held in honor of Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. But they did have their own athletic competitions every four years, and their…

Hello, Everyone! I absolutely love your magazine; I’ve been getting it for four or five years now. I adore reading and am an incredibly fast reader. My absolute favorite book series is Harry Potter, but Percy Jackson and Keeper of the Lost Cities and The School for Good and Evil are pretty close. Midnight (November/December 2022), Team Foster-Keefe all the way! As an amazing sweatshirt that I want to get says: “Team Keefe: It’s all about The Hair.” I also love imagine-writing myself into books. I agree that it’s so satisfying. I’m also in Gryffindor. The Dark Rose (November/December 2022), I also collect stickers and witchy stuff. Sparkly or natural, I don’t care. Just give me something sweet and quirky, and I’ll keep it. I love writing and poetry and…

In 1831, a fifteen-year-old boy named Syms Covington set sail on the famous five-year voyage of the HMS Beagle. The sea voyage was made famous for sailing around the globe with its passenger, Charles Darwin, a curious naturalist and geologist who explored the South American coast and its islands. Darwin’s discoveries in the Galápagos Islands led him to publish his theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species, which changed the way modern people thought about where humans and other living things come from. Syms Covington originally joined the crew as a fiddler and cabin boy. Halfway through the journey, he was hired as Charles Darwin’s assistant to help collect specimens. Both Darwin and Covington kept journals of the voyage; however, Covington stopped writing in his journal for a period…

“It was Mrs. May who first told me about them.”THE BORROWERS (The Borrowers, Book 1) by Mary Norton submitted by Arrietty via Blab About Books, Chatterbox “Before being terminated, I was Indian.”INDIAN NO MORE by Charlene Willing McManis with Traci Sorell submitted by Sonya P. via email “Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain.”INKHEART (Inkheart, Book 1) by Cornelia Funke submitted by Morning via Blab About Books, Chatterbox “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”I CAPTURE THE CASTLE by Dodie Smith submitted by Ella M. of Minneapolis, MN “On Friday, June 12, I woke up at six o’clock and no wonder; it was my birthday.”THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL by Anne Frank submitted by Lucy Smith of Detroit, MI “The end of the world started when a…

First prize 10 and under Ahmed Salman, age 9Seven Hills, OH Escape the Elevator Challenge Bob and Bobby’s jobs were to search buildings for anything valuable before the construction crew knocked them down. One day Bob and Bobby were doing their job when Bob decided to take the elevator down to the ground floor. The building was due to collapse in forty minutes. On their way down, the elevator stopped. The lights went out. Bobby tried to press the emergency button, but the power had gone out, and the telephone was not working. They thought it was a temporary power outage, but after waiting for thirty minutes they decided to get out. Bob knew there was a hatch at the top of the elevator. The problem was that the elevator…