Reviewed by Charles Ashbacher for Readers' Favorite

The potential to be transformed into something else is a powerful human desire; folklore and mythology are full of stories where a living creature is transformed into another. Examples are werewolves, the Greek gods assuming animal and human form and similar stories of animal-human shape shifting are found in Japanese myths. Different creatures are also given different emotions and intellectual characteristics, depending on how they are perceived. For example, the owl is considered wise. As children intellectually develop, they also see the differences in the creatures and naturally wonder how one creature perceives another. Jealousy is a natural human emotion and children easily transfer emotions to animals, so it is reasonable to them that one animal would be jealous of the abilities of another.

The transformation myth, jealousy of the abilities of others and conquering native fears are all woven into this story for children. In The Spider Who Wanted To Be A Cricket by Valerie Harmon, Spider is a creature that weaves complex webs and loves the day because it is afraid of the dark. One night, Spider hears Cricket happily singing and then Cricket tells Spider that it loves the night because that is when its singing is the best. This information makes Spider want to be a cricket so she starts eating like Cricket, tries to make noise by rubbing her legs together and tries to hop like a cricket, three skills that she struggles to acquire. Finally, after a great deal of effort she is transformed into Spricket, a combination creature that can do many of the things that spiders and crickets do. Most importantly, Spricket is no longer afraid of the dark. Children are naturally afraid of the dark; it is a fundamental fear that all must overcome as they grow older. By wrapping the moral of overcoming this fear within a transformation story, Harmon has created a tale that will keep the interest of the young reader.