All the world’s a stage in this month’s dramatic Cricket.

If you’ve ever longed to perform onstage, you’ll enjoy the trials of Gillian as she tries to get a part in her school play in “A New and Distant Star.” You’ll also learn about modern stage directions and theater troupes in Colonial America, when the audiences could get pretty rough if they didn’t like the actors!

Cricket’s creative impulse continues to flourish in the biography of Lucy Larcom, a nineteenth-century mill girl who became one of the country’s best-known poets. And, speaking of American writers, there’s also a humorous story from the journals of Henry David Thoreau, who becomes involved in a cross-country chase to recover his father’s escaped pig.

You’ll enjoy the touching story of a girl dealing with her beloved grandfather who has Alzheimer’s, a science fiction story set on Mars where there are flying pterodragons, and a new story contest. All in this month’s theatrical Cricket. Break a leg!