The Cricket In Times Square

In these opening chapters, Selden deftly uses vivid imagery to create a believable setting and humorous, sympathetic characters; elements that Garth Williams’s warmhearted illustrations complement. The story evokes empathy for displaced Chester and the financially beleaguered Bellini family and hints that their respective predicaments will pose significant difficulties for them. Selden begins establishing the themes of Good Friends: The Greatest Fortune and Home: Where the Heart Is.

Selden brings New York City to life with detailed descriptions that appeal to all the senses—from the smell of liverwurst to the neon of Times Square—but especially focuses on sounds. Selden uses onomatopoeia—words that sound like or suggest the objects they’re describing—to capture the sounds and bustle of the big city. For example, Tucker is familiar with “the rumble of subway trains and the shriek their iron wheels make when they go around a corner” as well as the “thrumming of the rubber tires of automobiles, and the hooting of their horns, and the howling of their brakes” (6-7). Similes elevate ordinary sounds to the exceptional: Chester’s chirp is “like a quick stroke across the strings of a violin” (9), and Chester feels that Times Square, with its mountainous buildings and babble of voices, “was as if [it] were a kind of shell, with colors and noises breaking in great waves inside it” (32).

The strident sounds of the city contrast with the calm, natural sounds that Chester makes, and which reflect his home, like the sound of a leaf falling at midnight, and the “burble” of a brook. Selden’s attention to differing sounds highlights the difference between Tucker and Harry’s New York City home and Chester’s rural Connecticut meadow. Additionally, the focus on sound introduces another of the story’s major themes: The Power of Music. Both Tucker and Harry observe Chester’s musical nature and talent in his “lovely” chirp and melodious voice.

Selden’s vivid descriptions and third-person narration, focusing on Tucker, Chester, and Mario’s perspectives, help make the characters and their world relatable. Chester quickly becomes immersed in the daily bustle of life in “the greatest city in the world” (7), capturing a portrait of New York City from the perspective of some of the city’s smallest citizens. To enhance the animal characters’ relatability even further, Selden anthropomorphizes them, giving Tucker Mouse, Harry Cat, and Chester endearing human qualities: The messy, excitable, and generous Tucker Mouse is an exceptional ambassador for New York City. Chester, who is lost, frightened, and friendless, finds an instant supportive friend in the small mouse. Tucker welcomes Chester enthusiastically. He reassures Chester, shares food with him, and is willing to help Chester get home but even more eager to have Chester stay and visit. Harry Cat is equally accepting, and his friendship with Tucker shows that true friendship isn’t inhibited by cultural expectations. Although Chester assumes that Tucker and Harry are natural enemies, as they’d be in the wild, they’re instead best friends, bonding within the urban environment for companionship and safety. Similarly, Mario sees Chester as a potential friend and a much-wanted pet, while Mama sees only a dirty, disease-carrying “bug.” Mario’s gentleness toward Chester reveals his sensitivity and acceptance. Friendship and its ability to transcend barriers is central to the story.

Garth Williams’s pen-and-ink illustrations complement the story’s gentle humor, conveying warmth, comfort, whimsy, and realism. Williams skillfully captures scale, showing the city’s vastness in relation to the comparatively tiny Chester, Tucker, and Harry—and their difference in size compared to each other, with Chester tiny beside Tucker, Tucker dwarfed by Harry, and even Mario looking small next to adult commuters as he crouches, searching for the source of the chirp.

Tucker and Harry both have friendly feelings toward Mario. They know how hard he works for his family, empathize with his lack of success, and worry about the future of the newsstand. Mama, Papa, and Mario Bellini’s newsstand represents a literal mom-and-pop (and kid) shop trying to compete against bigger newsstands. They’re proud and self-sufficient—Papa built the newsstand himself and carries “quality” reading material—but they struggle to earn a living. Kindly, peaceful Papa and dry, direct Mama both worry about the family finances, which is evident (and indicative of their different personalities) when Papa gently asks Mario about the night’s sales and Mama scolds Mario for playing with the cricket and not selling more papers. Likewise, Mario feels the family’s financial worries. His effort to make sales reveals his love for his family, his work ethic, and his integrity, as Mario tries to give Paul the change for his paper. Mario’s suggestion that the cricket will bring them good luck introduces the story’s motif of good and bad luck and foreshadows ups and downs for the newsstand.