Do I have any interest in hiking the Appalachian Trail? Absolutely not. Do I want to hear about the 67-year-old who was the first woman to hike the entire trail solo? Absolutely. And trust me, so do you.

An intimidating ogre, a feisty princess, a wisecracking donkey, a diminutive tyrant, an ambulatory gingerbread man, and other fantastical figures take over Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse with the July 17 through August 2 run of Shrek the Musical, the Tony-winning fairytale slapstick based on the Oscar-winning animated smash, and a show that Variety called a work of “irreverent charm” that “never stints on spectacle or laughs."

Seussical, now playing at Omar – I mean, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre – features an exuberant mash-up of plots from about a third of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s lifetime output of 60-plus children’s books. (And yeah, there were more Dr. Seuss books after he died. Peculiar thing, that.)

A boisterous, hilarious, critically acclaimed adaptation of Nickelodeon’s long-running animated children’s sitcom SpongeBob Squarepants, The SpongeBob Musical enjoys a July 10 through 19 engagement at Moline's Prospect Park Auditorium, the show's Quad City Music Guild presentation sure to demonstrate why this family treat earned 12 Tony Award nominations including Best Musical, and why the New York Times deemed it "a ginormous giggle of a show."