Part 4
The emperor’s cage turns out to be a beautiful mistake. Chester feels restless behind its bars — watched, shut in, more prisoner than prince — and misses his plain old matchbox. Falling asleep at last, he dreams himself home in Connecticut, nibbling a fresh green leaf… and wakes to a horror: the ‘leaf’ was a two-dollar bill from the newsstand’s cash drawer, and half of it is gone — eaten in his sleep. Tucker arrives with a mouse’s worth of wild schemes, but morning comes first, and with it Mama Bellini. Furious, she pronounces sentence: the cricket stays locked in the cage until the money is paid back. Chester, honest to his bones, refuses every escape plan — he ate the money, and he will serve his time fairly. Then Tucker reveals a secret: years of scrounged coins, a life savings of two dollars and ninety-three cents. Groaning at every coin, the miser of Times Square gives up two whole dollars — keeping ninety-three cents — and he and Harry stack the money in a gleaming tower for the family to find. In the morning the Bellinis marvel, the debt is paid, and Chester steps out of the cage a free cricket.
| Section | What you will practice |
|---|---|
| Vocabulary | Words of crime and kindness: restless, horrified, accuse, sentence, sacrifice… |
| Literary Elements | Symbols, situational irony, and what motivates a miser to give |
| Cross-Curricular | How crickets hear, and what paper money is really made of |
| Ch. | What happens |
|---|---|
| 7 | The Cricket Cage — restless in his splendid cage, Chester dreams of a Connecticut leaf — and eats half a two-dollar bill in his sleep. Mama’s sentence: caged until it is repaid. |
| 8 | Tucker’s Life’s Savings — refusing to escape, Chester serves his time — until Tucker sacrifices $2.00 of his $2.93 savings, stacked in a shining tower, and buys his friend’s freedom. |
ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.
- A tower of coins buys Chester’s freedom.
- Mama discovers the damage and pronounces sentence.
- Dreaming of a leaf, he nibbles the two-dollar bill.
- Tucker reveals his life savings of $2.93.
- Restless in the cage, Chester finally falls asleep.
Think back over the chapters. In the middle of the night, a homesick cricket dreams of the greenest leaf in Connecticut — and wakes with half of the family’s rarest bill inside him. He could vanish between the bars before morning; instead he folds his wings and waits for the judge. Across the station, a mouse who has counted his coins a thousand times counts them once more — and pushes two dollars of his two-ninety-three across the floor toward a friend he has known for barely a week. By sunrise there is a tower of silver on the shelf, and nobody upstairs will ever know who built it.
The dollar bill in your pocket is not really paper at all. American money is printed on a special blend of cotton and linen — cloth, not wood — because cloth is far more durable than ordinary paper. A bill must survive being folded, crumpled, sat on, and soaked, thousands of times over. Even so, money wears out. A one-dollar bill lasts only a few years as it passes from hand to hand and store to store — what banks call staying in circulation — before it grows too limp and torn to use. Worn-out bills are collected by banks, shredded, and replaced with crisp new ones. And a damaged bill is not always a lost cause: the government's rule is generous, and if you can turn in clearly more than half of a torn bill, you can redeem it — exchange it for a whole new one. So a bill nibbled at the edges is only wounded. But if half of a bill has vanished completely — say, into a sleeping cricket — its owner has a real problem.
“That is why a wounded bill is not always a lost bill.”
This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!
Writing Task — Part 4 “The Hardest Thing to Give”
Tucker gives away two dollars of his $2.93 — almost everything he has — to free a friend. Write about a time someone gave up something that truly mattered to them for somebody else (it can be real or invented). What was given, what did it cost the giver, and what did it buy that money never could? Tell it in 6–10 sentences, and let us feel the moment of letting go, the way Selden lets us hear Tucker groan over every coin.
No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.
Part 4 Complete!
You finished Chapters 7–8 of The Cricket in Times Square.
Here are your auto-graded results:
The best last step is to teach it. In your own words, explain what happened — retell a favorite scene, teach a character’s big choice, or sum up the main idea for a parent, friend, or classmate. When you can teach it clearly, you truly own it.
Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by George Selden. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows George Selden’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.