Described by Talkin' Broadway as a family entertainment that provides both “plenty of humor” and “simple yet incredibly effective lessons for younger children to learn,” playwright Allison Gregory's Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook enjoys an Augustana College presentation on February 29 and March 1, delivering what Arizona Central declared “a wonderfully fun production” that's “clever enough to charm all ages.”

More than 50 young participants from nine different Quad Cities communities will be “off to see the Wizard” from February 15 through 23, with Davenport Junior Theatre presenting its all-student production of the timeless adventure The Wizard of Oz as the second presentation in the venerable company's 68th season.

An iconic early project by a three-time Tony Award winner, composer Jason Robert Brown's cabaret-esque musical Songs for a New World enjoys a February 21 and 22 staging at Augustana College by eight student talents of the OperX ensemble, who will bring vocal life to this generational touchstone that led Theatre Mania to write, “Brown's score is filled with soul-stirring melodies, and his lyrics brim with emotion, hope, and soul.”

The Playcrafters Barn Theatre's presentation of The Boxcar Children opened on Friday with a simple, wholesome journey of four Depression-era youngsters and their adventures as recent orphans. Knowing that they will likely go to different foster homes, the Alden children escape into the woods and find a boxcar in which they begin to live, and while the set design was sparse, the actors, for the most part, were excellent – I found myself carefully listening to each character as they expressed their innermost thoughts and feelings. Like the old saying goes, "Less is more," and in this show, I found that to be particularly true.