A musical country cricket arrives by accident in a Times Square subway station and finds friends in a boy, a mouse and a cat
A cricket under the city
Chester, a cricket from rural Connecticut, falls asleep in a picnic basket and wakes up in the subway station beneath Times Square. He is found by Mario Bellini, a boy whose parents run a struggling newsstand in the station, and Mario decides to keep him as a pet. Chester soon meets Tucker, a fast-talking mouse who lives in a drainpipe, and Harry, a calm and good-natured cat, and the three become an unlikely household.
Who will enjoy it
Young readers and families looking for a gentle, funny read-aloud about friendship, city life and finding your place.
What you will get
A tender, witty classic about a country cricket who finds friendship and an unexpected talent in the subway beneath Times Square.
The Cricket in Times Square Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Children’s Books · Animal friends · New York City · Music
Length
144 pages · ≈ 4 h
More about this book
The adventures are small in scale and huge in feeling: a midnight party that ends in a scorched newsstand, a cricket who eats part of a two-dollar bill, a trip to Chinatown to buy a tiny cricket cage, and Tucker's comic agonies over whether to spend his life savings. Then Chester discovers that he can play almost any tune he hears, from opera to dance music, and crowds begin to gather around the Bellinis' stand.
Selden writes with a light, affectionate humor that never talks down to children, and the dialogue between Tucker and Harry is a joy to read aloud. New York is presented with real warmth, noisy and crowded but full of kindness in odd corners. Garth Williams's drawings, from the same hand that illustrated Charlotte's Web, give the animals their unforgettable faces.
A few period details feel dated, and some modern editions add a foreword and small updates to address them. The ending, as Chester longs for the fields of home, is quietly bittersweet. It is short enough to finish in a few evenings and rich enough to reread. About 144 pages in the Square Fish paperback.
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