Crickwing

Written and Illustrated by Janell Cannon

Grade Level: K-5

Genre: Fiction

            Have you ever had someone make fun of you before? Have you ever made fun of someone else? Does being made fun of leave you feeling hurt? Does picking on someone else make you feel powerful? Have you ever taken the time to think about how your actions might be hurting the other person, because in reality you both might be more similar than you think? You could even end up being friends. In Janell Cannon’s story Crickwing a cockroach and a colony of ants go through these similar experiences, but are able to learn from them.

            Crickwing by Janell Cannon is a story that talks about being bullied. The story tells about a cockroach that gets made fun of for having a wing that sticks out due to a close encounter with a toad. Crickwing begins to search for food at night when there are more predators, but isn’t made fun of. At night he would make sculptures out of his food, and every time he was interrupted by some animal attacking him. After spending several nights trying to escape wild animals he finds himself hiding under a rock. The next day he saw some tiny ants carrying food to their colony. Crickwing felt that the ants were so tiny they deserved to be picked on so he tripped them, then he hung them from branches and dug a hole across their path. That week the ants’ production was down due to the cockroach bullying the ants. The queen ant told the other ants to capture Crickwing and to use him as a peace offering to the army ants’ colony. In the process of capturing Crickwing his wing popped back into its correct place leaving him feeling much better. The little ants that carried Crickwing to the peace offering couldn’t deal with the idea of the army ants taking him, and even though he was a bully they still didn’t think he deserved it. The ants decided to let him go without knowing what they would tell their queen. Crickwing decided he would help the ants since they choose to not give him over to the army ants and for putting his wing back in place. Together the ants and Crickwing came up with an idea that would scare the army ants away when they came looking for their offering. When the army ants showed up they found a giant anteater standing in their path and quickly ran away in fright all due to Crickwing's talents with his food. The little ants were so excited and happy that the army ants wouldn’t ever be bothering them again they invited Crickwing to join their colony They had a celebration all the next day to honor Crickwing and how the army ants wouldn’t be bothering them every again. 

            The story Crickwing takes place in a forest. Probably somewhere more tropical or closer to the equator than New England because it talks about monkeys, lizards, and ocelots, which don’t live around here. Crickwing, the main character of the story, is a cockroach that gets the nickname Crickwing because one of his wings is twisted the wrong way. He was made fun of throughout most of the book and then he became the bully to the leafcutter ants in the story. Crickwing was a very artistic cockroach and he would make sculptures with his food. Besides being artistic he was in a lot of pain from his wing being twisted the wrong way. He also became so used to being picked on by others that he felt that as someone who is bigger than others it was their job to pick on and bother the smaller people; however, his view changed by the end of the story. As for the colony of ants in the story they didn’t like being picked on, but in the long run of things they felt as though being picked on wasn’t that bad in comparison to seeing the army ants take Crickwing. Although Crickwing was a bully they didn’t think he deserved something as awful as being taken by the army ant though he had put the ants through a lot of trouble. The problem in the story was being bullied. While Crickwing stopped being bullied by finding a place where he was the biggest he then started picking on the smaller animals. The solution, however, Crickwing discovered came after he saw the ants were pretty strong themselves and could pick on him too. He saw that they weren’t bad people and they had a problem of their own. In turn, Crickwing decided to help the ants with their problem and stopped all the bullying. The theme of this book is that bullying hurts people’s feelings and that everyone has different problems in their lives that they have to deal with. Instead of picking on people and making things harder for them we should learn to help them out.

Janell Cannon’s story Crickwing is a piece of fiction. The story was made up, the animals in the story can’t really talk, and animals can’t make food art. The story does, however, teach us about some of the animals we encounter in the book. For instance we are able to learn from the back of the book where Janell Cannon provides us with some informational pages about cockroaches and ants. We can also learn a lesson from the book Crickwing. We can learn that just because someone is smaller then you it doesn’t mean you have the right to pick on them. Often times the person being targeted hasn’t given you a reason to pick on them and they could be a really nice person that you just haven’t taken the time to get to know. If you did take the time to get to know them you might discover that you have something in common and could even end up being friends, which was the case with Crickwing and the ants.

            This story is written in a way that uses lots of description words to help hold the readers attention so it doesn’t become boring. It’s more at a reading level towards higher elementary grades, but it has a lesson that could be taught to students at lower levels as well. The author uses many synonyms for the word “said” and other various words in the story so it doesn’t become repetitive. There is a lot that takes place allowing the story to hold the interest of several different audiences such as students that like action, animals, happy endings, and great illustrations. Janell Cannon also does her own illustrations. The illustrations in the story are very detailed and life-like. They are also able to accurately represent the events taking place in the story. For each page there is a large colored picture and another small sketch underneath the writing to help show the representation of everything taking place in the text on that page. I feel as though the illustrations are very beautiful. From my own experiences I felt as though they made the book even more interesting because they were so creative.

            I really enjoyed this book and I would love to use it in my own classroom one day. I think it’s really important to teach about bullying and to help prevent it. I think this book could be used at the beginning of the year or whenever the students needed a reminder about bullying. It can be used to teach students how bullying is hurtful and that we are all similar. Hopefully from the lesson students will pick up on the fact they they shouldn’t bully other children because we all have challenging things that we go through, you might just not know what the other person is facing. Other things I could do with this book could be to use it to teach some description words since so many are used. It could also be used in a lesson about the word “said” and other things we can say instead of continually repeating the word “said” in our writing. There are several different ways to go about teaching a lesson based on this book and it’s such a good book I think it should be in every teacher’s classroom library.

The Massachusetts frameworks that would apply to this story:

RL 7: Students will understand the nature of written English and the relationship of letters and spelling patterns to the sounds of speech.

RL 8: Students will understand the nature of written English and the relationship of letters and spelling patterns to the sounds of speech.

RL 11: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of theme in a literary work and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.