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A Literary Thanksgiving Feast for your Family

Happy Turkey Day everyone! While you are waiting for the turkey to get perfectly browned, the potatoes to get soft, the drinks to get cold, and the football game to begin, why not settle down with your favorite kids and enjoy this smorgasbord of Thanksgiving treats from Cricket, including a poem appetizer, a non-fiction […]

Live From Lego League

STEM is SySTEMic! Cricket Media is giving away a BB-8 Droid, the hottest toy of the holiday season to showcase our focus on robotics and engineering in our discovery family of magazines, including Click for children ages 3 to 6 years, Ask for kids ages 6 to 9 years, and Muse for kids 9 […]

Thankfulness, A Family Value

When I was a kid, I remember having a penpal (or two) and I would wait eagerly for the letters and small packages that would occasionally arrive from faraway places. I guess that’s why I love the idea of those subscription boxes that seem to be everywhere these days. Scheduling something to come every month […]

China’s Mythical Rulers

“China’s Mythical Rulers”—now that sounded intriguing! As a Classics major, I knew well the myths of the ancient Mediterranean world, but not so much about the myths of ancient China. Over the years, we had focused several issues of Dig Into History on China’s dynasties and a few on specific cities, including the Forbidden City. […]

Living History

If your child isn’t particularly enthused by history, it’s not their fault. History, while potentially a super exciting subject, has traditionally been treated as an after-thought in elementary school curriculums that are super-focused on math and reading. Often children are given only a glimpse into a historical subject and sometimes that glimpse doesn’t even do […]

You Say Potato. I Say Racism.

You may not have known this, but it’s Native American Heritage month. Originally proposed at the turn of the century as a day to of recognition for the significant contributions of the first Americans, the effort grew into a month-long celebration of heritage, history, and what helped shape our nation. I can’t imagine not […]

Touring that Place Like it was 1999

The title of this blog comes from a line in a story my 9-year-old daughter wrote recently. It’s funny, right? My daughter is not so good with capital letters or commas or periods (not yet, at least), but she does have a way with language that gives me great hope that she will be a […]

Bingo! Here’s the Clue to Gaining a Monopoly on Family Game Night, Risk-Free.

I am so excited to write about family game night. My family loves playing games. We play cards at dinner (and yes, we even bring them to restaurants when we eat out). We play verbal games in the car while we’re driving. We play I Spy while we’re waiting in line at the bank. I’ve […]

5 Facts About Victorian Séance-Goers & Skeptics

Victorians were fascinated with spirits, magicians, telepathy, and all kinds of occult practices and supernatural phenomena. Here are five fascinating tidbits that didn’t make it in to Cicada’s November/December article “Victorian Ghost Hunters”: Arthur Conan Doyle believed in ghosts. The mastermind behind Sherlock Holmes was a die-hard séance-goer who wrote volumes on the topic […]

Oh, Those Autumn Holidays (Or, Not Everyone Celebrates Thanksgiving)

I have to admit that I sometimes make the common America-centric mistake of thinking everyone else also celebrates OUR holidays. For example, in corresponding with a friend in England, and considering a visit at the end of November, I expressed my concern that the timing would interfere with their Thanksgiving plans. “Our what plans?” […]