If you saw Wonder over the weekend – and based on the film's unexpectedly massive box office, a bunch of you likely did – you may have seen it alongside a hefty number of elementary- and middle-school students. If so, I hope you experienced this family melodrama the way I did during my sold-old screening: hearing, with immense gratitude, a young crowd cheer and applaud a cineplex entertainment that wasn't a superhero epic, a Disney reboot, a Pixar animation, or anything that involved robots transforming into cars.

Talk to anyone over 40, and most will tell you they think and feel as if they are still in their thirties. This is borne out every time the Night People announce a reunion concert in the Quad Cities and droves of fans turn out for the event.

Following the success of its 2015 family comedy Fancy Nancy: The Musical, Circa '21 presents another stage adventure with author Jane O'Connor's famed children's-book character in Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas, a holiday-themed musical that inspired praise from the New York Times: “What makes Splendiferous Christmas winning is that it dares to be a little naughty as well as nice.”

Described by legendary A Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor as “a force on the Minnesota roots music scene and beyond,” the five-piece roots and bluegrass ensemble Pert Near Sandstone plays Davenport's Redstone Room on November 30, with their most recent album Discovery of Honey lauded by CountryStandardTime.com as “a set of songs that's as rousing and robust as any countrified collective on a banner marquee.”

Arriving at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre a mere two years after its world premiere, the comedy Doublewide, Texas is the latest Southern farce by the popular playwriting team of Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten, whose numerous stage hits – all recently produced in the area – include The Dixie Swim Club, Mama Won't Fly, Always a Bridesmaid, and The Red Velvet Cake War.

Winner of seven 1977 Tony Awards and one of the 25 longest-running musicals in Broadway history, the iconic comic-strip adaptation Annie will be brought to life by Quad City Music Guild November 29 through December 3, its pre-opening sales so strong that a rare matinée performance has been added for Saturday, December 2.

Appearing through their U.S. tour that finds the Canadian relatives visiting six states in six days, the folk musicians of Kacy & Clayton perform a November 29 Moeller Nights concert in support of The Siren's Song, the recent album that led NoDepression.com to state, “Like something out of a dreamy folktale, second cousins Kacy & Clayton seem to have been beamed down to us from a hazy summer sky.”

Written by Thomas Meehan and based on the 2003 film comedy, Elf: The Musical is filled with lively music by Matthew Sklar and lyrics by Chad Beguelin, and director/choreographer Ann Nieman made great use of an exceptionally talented cast that didn't have a weak link in the bunch.

Each of the collective 11 scenes lasts mere minutes and usually employs no more than two actors on-stage at a time, with no more than three actors in any given scene. But the beauty of the script is its poignant, witty, heartbreaking, and hopeful look at the one thing that bonds these characters under the Northern Lights on a bitter Maine night: love.