Marianne Carus, who started Cricker (蟋蟀) magazine in1973 and served as Editor-in-Chief (总主编) until 2012, died on March 3 at the age of 92 this year.
Marianne believed that "only the best of the best is good enough for the young. "In Cicket, children would find wonderful stories with beautiful art, and be encouraged by ideas in the humanities and sciences. Marianne looked for stories from around the world to awaken admiration for different peoples and cultures. Most important, Cricker would never talk down to children.
Marianne knew that children were filled with fun, and she wanted Cricket to be, too — "humor from the heart that makes you laugh out loud. "And so. she named her literary magazines after a funny group of bugs (虫子) , such as Lady bung and Spider.
Over the years. Cricket has been read by millions of children and given many writers and artists their start Marianne kept a special box of "love letters" to the magazine. She treasured these letters from Cricket readers, including long-ago readers. They told her that their interest in reading had begun with Cricket.
▲ She considered other names, such as Troubadour or Taliesin, the singers and storytellers of old who traveled from one place to another to share their songs and stories. Then. one night, she was reading Isaac Bashevi Singer's memoir (回忆录) A Day of Pleasure. about his childhood in Warsaw. In it he wrote∶There was a stove in Shosha's apartment behind which there lived a cricket. It chirped the nights through all winter long I imagined the cricket was telling a story that would never end. "That's exactly what Marianne wanted her children's magazine to do—to tell stories that would never end! So the name Cricker became her best choice.
Thank you for everything, Marianne. May the stories, and the laughter, never end!
