The Cricket in Times Square

Summary

The Cricket in Times Square is set at a newsstand in the Times Square subway station in New York City at the end of one summer. The stand belongs to the Bellini family: Papa, Mama, and their son Mario, who keeps it open late in the hope of selling a few more papers, because business is poor. Tucker Mouse, a quick-talking scrounger who lives in an abandoned drain pipe and hoards a pile of coins he calls his life savings, watches Mario from the mouth of his pipe. One night Mario hears a chirp and finds Chester, a cricket from a Connecticut meadow who followed the smell of liverwurst into a picnic basket and was carried into the city on a train. Mario makes him a bed in a matchbox, and over Mama's objections Papa lets him stay. Chester makes friends with Tucker and with Tucker's companion, Harry Cat, and the three climb up to look at the lights of Times Square. In Chinatown Mario buys a small Chinese cricket cage with a silver bell from the shopkeeper Sai Fong, who tells him an old legend about crickets and later sends him home with mulberry leaves. Chester, dreaming one night, nibbles half of a two-dollar bill left in the stand, and Tucker gives up his life savings so that the money can be replaced. Later, when the three friends celebrate in the newsstand, Tucker knocks over a box of matches and the stand catches fire; Mama declares the cricket a jinx and wants him gone. Then Chester, who has found that he can chirp any music he hears on the radio, plays Mama's favorite Italian song, and she relents. Mr. Smedley, a music teacher who buys his magazines at the stand, hears him and writes to the music editor of the New York Times; soon crowds gather in the station for Chester's concerts and the Bellinis sell all their papers. But Chester tires of performing on schedule, and as the leaves begin to turn he longs for his meadow. After a last concert that stops Times Square in its tracks, Tucker and Harry put him on a train at Grand Central Station bound for Connecticut. Mario wakes to find him gone and is glad for him. Published in 1960 with drawings by Garth Williams, the book was named a Newbery Honor Book in 1961.

Top Lessons

• Friends who give up something

  Tucker loves his life savings more than almost anything, yet when Chester is in trouble over the two-dollar bill he hands it over. Harry, who wants Chester to stay, still helps him leave. Friendship in this book is measured by what each friend is willing to give.

• A gift used to help others

  Chester's music first saves him from Mama's anger and then rescues the Bellinis' failing newsstand. His talent is not something to show off but something that does good for the family that took him in.

• Fame is not the same as happiness

  At the height of his success Chester is tired and homesick. He chooses the quiet meadow over the crowds, and Mario, who loves him, lets him go. The book shows that doing what is right for a friend can mean giving him up.

• Country mouse and city mouse

  Chester sees the city with country eyes, and Tucker and Harry see the country only in Chester's stories. Each learns to admire the other's home without giving up his own.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

No medical content of note. Chester's exhaustion and loss of joy under a schedule of daily concerts, and his homesickness as autumn comes, are told as a children's story about fame and home rather than as illness.