The Cricket in Times Square

This charming book is part of our Core C with Sonlight and it was a fun book for our family read aloud.

The Bellini family has a newsstand in the Times Square subway station and are struggling to make ends meet, when Mario finds a cricket and a side by side adventure begins. Chester Cricket was carried to the Big Apple in a basket and ended up lost far from his Connecticut home and is found by Mario who makes him a pet. In the newsstand Chester meets Tucker and Harry that welcome him to New York City and quickly befriend him.

A boy's love for a cricket and the friendship of three unlikely creatures leads to a parallel story of the human world and the animal world and how they intertwine. This story made us laugh often and also feel deeply. It opened up conversations about responsibility, caring for others, helping others and selflessness.

While a level of it is silly with the animals, it is a great way to teach emotions and Biblical character traits as well as learning to recognize worldly character traits as you deal with the personalities the animals portray.

Fun and engaging story, great characters, deep emotion, funny mishaps, excellently written, and relatable at any age, I highly recommend this book.

5 stars for this family read.

I'm using this in the Tim Challies 2019 Reading Challenge for a book about Music or a Musician because of the focus on Chester's Musical Ability! Call it a stretch but sometimes stretches are necessary to make what you're reading fit!