I love Cricket Magazine.

Actually, I love all the magazines that Cricket Media produces:  high-quality, beautiful, well-edited, well-selected material worthy of the children around the world who read them every month.  I love my interactions with the editors I’ve met and appreciated at Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, and Babybug.

Working with those talented people is always a great pleasure.  I could go on and on. . . .

But on to this month’s Cricket!  It’s packed with cool stories and beautiful illustrations, and I am lucky enough to have the second part of my story in it.  Asha, the beautiful African grey parrot, has flown up into a huge tree outside Mrs. Kadima’s house.  Will Seth be able to coax the frightened bird down?

I love the illustrations by Marta Antelo, love that the story is set in nearby Seattle, and love that the Asha and Mrs. Kadima have just arrived from Kenya, the exquisite country where I was privileged to grow up!

I’m pretty tickled I got some space at the end of the story to tell the tale of Ituri, my old African grey parrot friend.  Ituri was the inspiration for Asha, for the theme of coming to a new home while still missing the one you left behind.  It’s hard to move, especially if you have to spend a lot of time in quarantine, which was the case for poor, glorious Ituri.

I hope you order a copy of Cricket Magazine–or even better, subscribe for a year!