My Grandma and Cricket Magazine

My grandmother was one smart woman. She knew where my head was at. She knew where I was going, and I hadn't even gotten there yet when she died.

This morning I had an odd desire to revisit a magazine I read as a child, a magazine that, as I now recall, my grandmother faithfully renewed for me every year until I was well beyond the age to which it was geared. That magazine was Cricket. I loved Cricket with a passion. Before that she'd subscribed to Ladybug and Spider, both publications that, in thier time, I loved too. But Cricket was the one I stayed with the longest -- the stories were better, the pictures brighter. It was practically a party, opening up a new issue every month. I especially loved saving all the issues and going back through to read the stories that came out in episodes. I loved them so much I saved many of my favorite stories in a box, laborously ripped from the magazines that had originally housed them. I think I still have a box of the magazines at home, too. I don't want to get rid of them -- it's a link to my childhood and a link to Grandma.

I picked up an issue several years ago in the children's section and was a little disappointed -- the myths and legends that I had loved so much had been replaced by newer, gritter, young-adult kinds of stories.  I don't care what your teacher education manuals tell you, not every child wants to read about the problems they might be facing in their day-to-day lives. I know I didn't. Ramona, Amber Brown, and pretty much anything Judy Blume every wrote were not welcome additions to my library bag.

I think this magazine might have been part of why I became a writer of stories. Because my grandmother saw they were important to me, and continued buying that magazine subscription so I could continue to see new examples and continue to read. In pedagogy now we're talking about the writing process and how reading (and subsequent discussion of that reading) is important to formulating how a story works.

Thanks, Grandma. I think you taught me that already.