By George Selden
A country cricket gets carried into the Times Square subway by accident, where a scheming mouse and a gentle cat take him in and his chirping turns him into the toast of New York.
Chester Cricket climbs into a picnic basket back in a Connecticut meadow and wakes up in the Times Square subway station, about as far from home as a cricket can get. A boy named Mario, whose parents run a newsstand that's barely getting by, finds him and takes him in. Chester makes two friends fast: Tucker Mouse, a fast-talking hoarder who lives in a drainpipe, and Harry Cat, who's calm and easygoing and a little wiser than either of them. Then someone notices Chester can chirp any tune he hears, note for note. His concerts start pulling in crowds, and those crowds may be just what the struggling newsstand needs, even as Chester keeps missing the quiet field he came from.
The sentences here are longer and more old-fashioned than the ones in most chapter books your child has met, so the book stretches their ear a little just by its rhythm. It's a New York that doesn't exist anymore, and part of the pleasure is how thoroughly it's gone. Under the comedy there's a real ache: Chester is famous and well-fed and still homesick for his quiet field, and that keeps the story from floating off into pure charm. Reading it aloud is what makes the richer language and the dated bits go down easily, so your child gets a real classic without having to climb it by themselves.