The Cricket Winter

It seems a little odd that the book Felice Holman is best remembered for is, "Slake's Limbo". That gritty urban drama about a boy living in the subway system of New York has captured the imaginations of thousands of child readers. So who woulda thunk that the same author would be capable of a sweet animal drama like, "The Cricket Winter"? Originally published in 1967, I would love to know the story behind its republication by Eerdmans Books For Young Readers. Now the story has been newly paired with illustrator Robyn Thomas so as to fill a hitherto unknown gap in children book collections everywhere. Part morality tale, part fable, the book is an entirely peculiar tale all of its own design. Some people will question its morality. Others its message. And though I cannot quite figure out what it is that the story is trying to say, I will proclaim it a most interesting tale that is definitely bound to inspire a great deal of talk. Again. For you see, there once was a cricket in love. And, as the book points out, "a cricket-in-love is so tender and heartrending, so attuned to his love, that he is, for the moment, at least, quite perfect". So this cricket was until the day he and his lady quarreled over how to raise their children. Seriously miffed, the lady cricket left our hero in his snug little home beneath the floorboards of a house, until the winter snow blocked up the entrance and he was forced to stay within. Meanwhile, the boy of the house, named Simms Silvanus "though he would have much preferred `John'" builds a telegraph key with which to speak in Morse Code. As it happens, the cricket is fluent in this code and the two converse together over the house's big problem. You see, there is a rat beneath the house who is a scourge upon the building. He is currently starving a mouse family and is the bane of Simms' father's life. Now, boy and cricket must determine what to do about the rat, ethically, practically, and morally. And the answer is not an easy one. I would dare say that, "The Cricket Winter" has more to say about being "good" than most preachy or didactic children's books would ever dare. It raises some pretty shocking questions too. If a person is literally going to cause you and your children to die by their actions AND they have been informed of this fact AND they do not care, are you allowed to kill them? Does anything justify killing a fellow creature? If so, where do you draw the line? This book doesn't delve quite as deeply into these questions as I might have liked, but it certainly goes further than most stories would. When a nice mouse family informs the cricket that the only thing to do is to kill the rat, rather than go along with this plan (as most fable or fairy tale characters would) the cricket is horrified. And rightfully so. Holman makes the entire situation out to be a state of war, and in war there is death. Still, does that mean that killing the rat is the last recourse? The characters in the book seem to thin