Lovely little book about Chester the country cricket and his city smart friends Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat. Poignant ending! ( )

Chester Cricket jumps into a picnic basket in his meadow in Connecticut and finds himself on a train to New York City - specifically, the Times Square subway station, where he meets Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat, and is adopted by Mario Bellini, whose family runs a newsstand. Mario ventures to Chinatown to find a cricket cage and learn what Chester likes to eat (mulberry leaves), and Chester wows the Bellinis and the subway crowds by giving concerts of songs he's heard on the radio. But Chester's concert schedule becomes exhausting, and he misses Connecticut, so Tucker and Harry help him come up with a plan to go home - and maybe to visit in the future. ( )

Tucker is a streetwise city mouse. He thought he'd seen it all. But he's never met a cricket before, which really isn't surprising, because, along with his friend Harry Cat, Tucker lives in the very heart of New York City--the Times Square subway station. Chester Cricket never intended to leave his Connecticut meadow. He'd be there still if he hadn't followed the entrancing aroma of liverwurst right into someone's picnic basket. Now, like any tourist in the city, he wants to look around. And he could not have found two better guides--and friends--than Tucker and Harry. The trio have many adventures--from taking in the sights and sounds of Broadway to escaping a smoky fire.

Chester makes a third friend, too. It is a boy, Mario, who rescues Chester from a dusty corner of the subway station and brings him to live in the safety of his parents' newsstand. He hopes at first to keep Chester as a pet, but Mario soon understands that the cricket is more than that. Because Chester has a hidden talent and no one--not even Chester himself--realizes that the little country cricket may just be able to teach even the toughest New Yorkers a thing or two.

I do wish I had read this when I was a kid and not an old fuss budget - I was too distracted by the stereotyping and the dated scenario (kid working a newstand alone at night in Times Square) and most of all, the knowledge that a cricket life span is maybe a season long at most, and therefore Chester was doomed to die within moments of the story's end. That knowledge cast a pall over an otherwise charming tale I'll read to my great-niece, and recommend for children who demonstrate both blissful ignorance and a reasonably strong reading vocabulary. ( )

The boys really liked this one. I remember nothing about it although I know I read it as a child. A good book about friendship in unlikely places and learning to be true to yourself. Children have an extrememly large capacity for willing suspension of disbelief. This book play right into that ability. Just like the boy in the book, they can imagine that a cricket has intelligence and a soul. ( )