Cricket (magazine)

Cricket is an illustrated literary magazine for children published in the United States, founded in September 1973 by Marianne Carus whose intent was to create "The New Yorker for children."

Each issue of Cricket is 48 pages. The magazine is published nine times a year (monthly, with some of the summer months combined) by the Carus Publishing Company of Peru, Illinois. Its target audience is children from 9 to 14 years old. Until March 1995, Cricket was published by the Open Court Publishing Company of La Salle, Illinois, now part of Carus.

Cricket publishes original stories, poems, folk tales, articles and illustrations by such notable artists as Trina Schart Hyman, the magazine's art director from 1973 to 1979. Carus has solicited materials from well-known authors and illustrators, including Lloyd Alexander, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Hilary Knight, William Saroyan, Ursula K. Le Guin, Eric Carle, Stacy Curtis, Wallace Tripp, Charles Ghigna and Paul O. Zelinsky. Cricket also runs contests and publishes work by its readers. Hyman contributed to the magazine until her death in 2004.

One distinct feature of Cricket is the illustrated cast of recurring characters that appears in the margins of each issue, similar to a comic strip. These characters include Cricket, Ladybug, and other friends, most of whom are also insects. The characters are involved in a storyline that runs throughout the issue, but also comment on the articles above them. They define difficult words, draw attention to unusual facts, and otherwise annotate the magazine's content.

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