Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Children’s Book Club: ‘The Cricket in Times Square’

By Megan Willome 4 Comments

Garth Williams
At some point every student will encounter Greek mythology. If the classroom is their first exposure (as it was for me), it will probably go poorly. But when students stumble across these tales in other forms, they have the familiarity that breeds delight. Middle-school students have Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. But younger kids can begin with a tale that has a Greek hero tucked into the voice of a tiny cricket: George Selden’s The Cricket in Times Square.

It starts with a sound. Not cars or trains or people or pigeons such as frequent Times Square in New York City. Tucker, the mouse, had never heard a sound like this one. A boy, Mario Bellini, hears it too but doesn’t know what it is.

If a leaf in a green forest far from New York had fallen at midnight through the darkness into a thicket, it might have sounded like that.”

The sound is made by a cricket. Mario keeps it for a pet and makes it a matchbox bed. Tucker learns the cricket’s name is Chester.

He had a high musical voice. Everything he said seemed to be spoken to an unheard melody.”

Chester’s first true fan? Harry the Cat, a friend of Tucker’s. Soon Chester’s talents are discovered by Mario, his parents and Mr. Smedley — a music teacher who notices Chester can play a perfect middle C. Eventually Chester will share his music with 783 people who pass the Bellini family’s newsstand in Times Square. And when he does, everything stops.

You wouldn’t think a cricket’s tiny chirp could carry so far, but when all is silence, the piercing notes can be heard for miles.

Traffic came to a standstill. The buses, the cars, men and women walking—everything stopped. And what was strangest of all, no one minded. Just this once, in the very heart of the busiest of cities, everyone was perfectly content not to move and hardly to breathe. And for those few minutes, while the song lasted, Times Square was as still as a meadow at evening, with the sun streaming in on the people there and the wind moving among them as if they were only tall blades of grass.”

The chapter in which that passage occurs is titled “Orpheus.” As in the mythological musician and poet of the same name who traveled to the underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice and failed to bring her back.

I started reading The Cricket in Times Square in December, then put in an order through Interlibrary Loan. The loan was delayed in the holiday rush, but the delay was fortuitous. It gave me time to discover the Broadway musical Hadestown, based on the myth of Orpheus and Euridyce. So when I finally read the cricket book and Mr. Smedley called Mario’s cricket a “little black Orpheus,” I knew who he was talking about.

Who is Orpheus, Mr. Smedley?” asked Mario.

“Orpheus was the greatest musician who ever lived,” said the music teacher. “Long, long ago, he played on a harp—and he played it so beautifully that not only human beings but animals and even the rocks and trees and waterfalls stopped their work to listen to him.”


Or, as the old tale is told again in Hadestown, in the song Come Home With Me (reprise)

ORPHEUS:
I sang a song
So beautiful
Stones wept

And from Road to Hell (reprise):

HERMES:
See, Orpheus was a poor boy
But he had a gift to give
He could make you see how the world could be
In spite of the way that it is

That’s what Chester the cricket does too. Chester was a poor country cricket. But he had a gift to give. He made Times Square fall silent in order to hear the tune of his wings. And for a few minutes, busy New Yorkers saw how the world could be.

Chester gets a happier ending than Orpheus, who did not trust Euridyce and so was parted from her forever. But Chester trusted his friends and returned home safely.

George Selden had the idea for this story when he actually heard a cricket chirp in Times Square. In 1961 this book won the Newbery honor, which sounds like a consolation prize, but there’s another book you may have heard of that also won the runner’s up honor: Charlotte’s Web. Both books were illustrated by Garth Williams.

His eye for detail is superb. When there’s a stack of newspapers, you can count every paper. Chester, Tucker, and Harry are drawn to scale, and they look like the animals they are. Chester is so small that he doesn’t have a discernible face, but his emotions are conveyed by the slant of his antennae.

Selden wrote six more books about Chester and his friends, and the story was adapted into an animated film in 1973 by Chuck Jones, of Looney Toones fame, followed by two more films.

Selden and Williams are gone, but the Greek myths and Chester endure. That’s why we keep rereading old stories. Because sometimes we need an Orpheus to drop into our craziness and make everything turn out right, in spite of the way that it is. For as long as it takes to sing one song.

_______________

The next Children’s Book Club will meet Friday, April 10. We’ll read Fear the Bunny by Richard T. Morris, illustrated by Priscilla Burris. William Blake’s poem The Tyger figures into this funny tale, and we’ll be learning the poem By Heart for April.

William Blake Tyger Tyger

Photo by Juan Antonio Segal, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.

Browse more Children’s Book Club

rainbow crow front cover outlined
5 star

“Megan Willome has captured the essence of crow in this delightful children’s collection. Not only do the poems introduce the reader to the unusual habits and nature of this bird, but also different forms of poetry as well.”

—Michelle Ortega, poet and children’s speech pathologist

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.
Megan Willome
Latest posts by Megan Willome (see all)
  • Perspective: The Two, The Only: Calvin and Hobbes - December 16, 2022
  • Children’s Book Club: A Very Haunted Christmas - December 9, 2022
  • By Heart: ‘The night is darkening round me’ by Emily Brontë - December 2, 2022

Filed Under: Children's Authors, Children's Book Club, Children's Stories, Music, nature

Try Every Day Poems...

About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.

Comments

  1. L.L. Barkat says

    March 13, 2020 at 11:42 am

    Such a marvelously poetic text. Older books often do seem to have this quality.

    Love: “If a leaf in a green forest far from New York had fallen at midnight through the darkness into a thicket, it might have sounded like that.”

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      March 13, 2020 at 11:46 am

      That sentence occurs early on, and that’s when I knew I would love this book.

      Reply
  2. Will Willingham says

    March 15, 2020 at 3:39 pm

    I think this story was my introduction to New York. Maybe only to Times Square, even though our annual New Year’s celebration watching the ball drop on tv should have done that for me. Somehow this story brought it closer, in the strange way that a fictional story (complete with impossible talking animals) can do. I don’t remember many of the details any more, but I remember loving this story so much. Thanks for this reminder. 🙂

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      March 15, 2020 at 8:54 pm

      Happy to be a source of remembrance.

      One thing I love about the talking animals is that, as enlightened city folk, Tucker the Mouse and Harry the Cat are friends.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy