With her most recent booth Guts a number-one bestseller on lists for the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher's Weekly, an award-winning author and cartoonist serves as the virtual guest in The Magic of Raina Telgemeier, a December 10 event hosted by Illinois Libraries Present and presented by the East Moline and Silvis Public Libraries.

A 2017 Tony Award nominee and Drama Desk Award winner, as well as a work by the masterful composing team of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, Broadway's Anastasia enjoys a City Circle Theatre Company presentation at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts staging from December 6 through 15, the musical lauded by Time Out New York as "a sweeping adventure, romance, and historical epic whose fine craftsmanship will satisfy musical-theatre fans beyond the show's ideal audience of teenage girls."

Offering its last celebration of the written and spoken word in 2024, Rock Island's Midwest Writing Center and Rozz-Tox team up for a December 7 event in the SPECTRA Reading Series, with lauded author Jacob Saenz and writers from Narratives QC presenting a night of public readings, an open mic, and a community write-in.

The Palme d'Or winner at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival that also received Best Foreign-Language Film nominations from the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, the Japanese family drama Shoplifters enjoys a special December 12 screening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum, with IndieWire's David Ehrlich praising the work as one that "stings (with) the loneliness of not belonging to anyone, and the messiness of sticking together."