The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden

The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden

After Chester lands, in the Times Square subway station, he makes himself comfortable in a nearby newsstand. There, he has the good fortune to make three new friends: Mario, a little boy whose parents run the falling newsstand, Tucker, a fast-talking Broadway mouse, and Tucker's sidekick, Harry the Cat. The escapades of these four friends in bustling New York City makes for lively listening and humorous entertainment. And somehow, they manage to bring a taste of success to the nearly bankrupt newsstand.

The Cricket in Times Square is a 1961 Newbery Honor Book.

George Selden (1929-1989) was the author of A Cricket in Times Square, a timeless children's classic that won the Newbery Honor in 1961. Selden was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and obtained his B.A. from Yale University. He received his bachelor's degree from Yale, where he was a member of the Elizabethan Club and wrote to the literary magazine. He attended Columbia University for three summer sessions and received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Rome for a year after graduation. Selden was frequently asked where he got the concept for The Cricket in Times Square.

I was riding the train home one night and heard a cricket chirp in the Times Square subway station. Within minutes, the story began to emerge in my imagination. Minutes like this are extremely valuable to an author, despite the fact that they occur far too infrequently. Tucker's Countryside and The Old Meadow are two of the seven novels in the popular Cricket series.

The Cricket in Times Square was adapted into an animated feature in 1973. Selden published around fifteen books and two plays during his lifetime. His stories combine the fantastic with everyday life, and he felt it was critical that his animal characters express genuine emotions and feelings.