Cricket is an illustrated literary magazine for children published in the United States, founded in September, 1973, by Marianne Carus, whose intent was to create "The New Yorker for children." Marianne Carus still serves as the magazine's editor-in-chief. Each issue of Cricket is 64 pages. The magazine is published monthly (12 times a year) by the Carus Publishing Company of Peru, Illinois. Its target audience is children from 9 to 14 years old. Until March 1995, Cricket was published by the Open Court Publishing Company of La Salle, Illinois, now part of Carus. Cricket publishes original stories, poems, folk tales, articles and illustrations by some notable artists as Trina Schart Hyman, the magazine's art director from 1973 to 1979. Carus has solicited materials from well-known authors and illustrators, including Lloyd Alexander, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Hilary Knight, William Saroyan, Ursula K. Le Guin, Eric Carle and Paul O. Zelinsky. Cricket also runs contests and publishes work by its readers. One distinct feature of Cricket is the illustrated cast of recurring characters that appears in the margins of each issue, similar to a comic strip. These characters include Cricket, Ladybug, Spider and other friends, most of whom are also insects. The characters are involved in a storyline that runs throughout the issue, but also comment on the articles above them. They define difficult words, draw attention to unusual facts, and otherwise annotate the magazine's content. With time, the magazine has branched off into several spin-off magazine for different age groups, currently Babybug (up to 3 years old), Ladybug, (2-6), Spider, (6-9) and Cicada, for teenagers. In 2003, Cricket Books published Celebrate Cricket: 30 Years of Stories and Art (ISBN 0-8126-2695-8), a retrospective that republishes stories from the magazine and includes interviews with some of the founders and contributors.
