Here it is, the second episode of a new podcast that I’m doing with Matt Bird, Secrets of Story. As Matt mentioned in his own post about this episode, most of it was recorded before the disastrous election, so consider its goofy, antic mood as a “relic of a happier world, before evil triumphed,” as Matt put it.

Now, I’ve already explained the nature of my friendship with Matt Bird and my connection to his “Secrets of Story” blog in a previous post. Basically, in this podcast we try to figure out what makes for good stories. Usually Matt brings up some advice from the storytelling advice book he’s written (called Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers—you should buy a copy right now!). I’m no story guru, but I am an author, and I sometimes disagree with his advice. I’m usually more practical and intuitive, he’s theoretical and analytical.

You can subscribe to the podcast here. Matt also put it up on Soundcloud, so you can listen to it above, too.

In this episode, we discuss Matt’s fourteen-point story structure and test it against the classic movie Silence of the Lambs. Every “story guru” has their own recommended story structure, from Aristotle to Joseph Campbell to Dan Harmon to FILM CRIT HULK. Matt’s fourteen-point structure shares some similarities with these, of course, but he also has his own twists that are entirely original to him. Some of them are quite brilliant . . .

. . . And some of them I disagree with intensely. One of them is a certain step of his fourteen-point structure. We debate it in this second episode of the podcast, and as far as I can tell, it seems I bring Matt around to my point of view. You can read more deeply about Matt’s fourteen-point structure in this series of posts on his blog (the posts are in reverse chronological order, though, so scroll to the bottom and read from the bottom up). Or you could just buy his book.

Now here’s something juicy. At the end of the previous episode, Matt and I launched a hopefully-recurring feature called “Free Story Ideas,” in which Matt or I “give away” story ideas that we’ve dreamed up, but that we haven’t had the time or inclination to actually write. Matt’s idea last time was a movie or TV show based on Laika, the Russian dog who was the first Earth animal in space in 1957.

Matt’s premise: what if, instead of Laika dying in space in the Sputnik-2 as we all concluded, she was picked up by aliens? And what if those aliens are watching all the planets with intelligent life, and the first time any planet sends a living organism into space, those aliens whisk away the organism (in this case, Laika) in order to test them, to see if that planet is worthy to be included in the Galactic Empire—and if they fail the test, the planet is destroyed? And so then Laika is put in the odd position of fighting for the life of the planet that only hours ago callously flung her up into space to die?

Well, unbeknownst to Matt, after he “gave away” his idea, I decided to do a writing experiment. I gave myself three days to scribble a not-necessarily-great, first-draft script of his Laika premise. I called it “Laika and the Blue Mouse” and it’s supposed to be an animated Adult-Swim sci-fi comedy in the tradition of “Rick and Morty” or “Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” You can download it here if you want to read it. Matt and I are going to go through the script in the next episode and he’s going to give his story-guru notes on it.

Not to protest too much, but the script’s not necessarily me at my best! But my role on the podcast is to represent the practical realities of writing, as opposed to Matt’s analytical theory of storytelling. So I wanted to open up the creative process, and give a look under the hood, and show how important it is not to worry about perfection, just to get out that crappy first draft, and not putting any ego into it. Polishing and editing can happen later!

Anyway, when forcing yourself to finish something within a deadline, you might find yourself coming up with crazy and fun ideas that you might not otherwise had if you’d taken a more deliberative approach. If you want to chime in about your own critiques of the script, head on over to Matt’s post and leave a comment.

I’ll see you in space! The script is here!

Everybody loves Matt de la Peña’s 2016 Newbery Medal Winning book Last Stop on Market Street. I love it too! I’ve read it to my girls countless times, they love it as well! What’s not to love? Why stop at a measly Newbery Medal anyway? Give that book a Caldecott! Wait, it won a Caldecott Honor too? Sure! Why not! While we’re at it, can we give Matt de la Peña an NCTE National Intellectual Freedom Award? Absolutely! What’s one more award! Can we get him a Congressional Medal of Honor as well? Why not throw that in too? Can’t hurt, can it? Everybody loves Matt de la Peña! I love Matt de la Peña! I met Matt de la Peña once at the Rochester Teen Book Festival in 2013, and discovered Matt de la Peña is tall! Like, really tall! Like, he’s twice my height! Everybody loves tall people! They deserve to be successful! It’s only fair!

The book was illustrated by Christian Robinson. I bet he’s tall, too!

But here’s the thing. I’ve read Last Stop On Market Street many, many times. And I do love it. What’s more, I’ve gotten a fair number of excellent movie submissions based on it for my 90-Second Newbery Film Festival. But something has occurred to me, on my umpteenth time through the story. Something that had been nagging me about the story from the very first time I read it. And now I can’t let it go.

The “nana” character, which everyone bends over backwards to praise for her gentle whimsical wisdom, is one of the most infuriatingly duplicitous characters in all of children’s literature.

Luckily, Last Stop On Market Street clocks in at a mere 757 words. So I found it easy to make the necessary fixes. Just had to interpolate a few lines here and there. Heads-up to Penguin Books: for future editions of Last Stop On Market Street, you can just cut-and-paste what I’ve written below.

Matt de la Peña: YOU’RE WELCOME.

CJ pushed through the church doors, skipped down the steps. The air outside smelled like freedom, but it also smelled like rain, which freckled CJ’s shirt and dripped down his nose. He ducked under his nana’s umbrella, saying, “How come we gotta wait for the bus in all this wet?” “Trees get thirsty, too,” his nana told him.

“I’m not talking about the trees, I’m talking about my reasonable physical needs. I am wet and uncomfortable,” replied CJ. But nana just kept going on about trees, pointing at one:

“Don’t you see that big one drinking through a straw?” CJ looked for a long time but never saw a straw.

“This is the very definition of gaslighting,” said CJ.

From the bus stop, he watched water pool on flower petals. Watched rain patter against the windshield of a nearby car. His friend Colby climbed in, gave CJ a wave, and drove off with his dad. “Nana, how come we don’t got a car?” “Boy, what do we need a car for? We got a bus that breathes fire, and old Mr. Dennis, who always has a trick for you.”

“Why can’t you just be forthright with me and admit that we can’t afford a car?” said CJ. “There’s nothing shameful about not having enough money for a car. But when you dance around the issue like this in such a transparent way, You make me suspect that maybe there is something to be ashamed of.”

The bus creaked to a stop in front of them. It sighed and sagged and the doors swung open.

“And this bus has never breathed fire once,” said CJ to himself. “Plenty of exhaust coming out, though. If you’re going to try to sell that as fire to me, you have an uphill battle.”

“What’s that I see?” Mr. Dennis asked. He pulled a coin from behind CJ’s ear, placed it in his palm. Nana laughed her deep laugh and pushed CJ along.

“I wonder if Mr. Dennis feels obligated to keep doing this, or if he genuinely enjoys it,” thought CJ. “He’s done it like two dozen times with me. We both feel that the trick has kind of run its course, but nana seems really into it. Still, how can he afford to be giving away quarters to every kid who comes on the bus? It’s awkward. I always feel like I’m taking advantage of him.”

They sat right up front. The man across the way was tuning the guitar. An old woman with curlers had butterflies in a jar. Nana gave everyone a great big smile and a “good afternoon.” She made sure CJ did the same.

Which is what a psycho would do, if you think about it for more than three seconds. Has Matt de La Peña actually ever taken public transportation???

The bus lurched forward and stopped, lurched forward and stopped. Nana hummed as she knit. “How come we always gotta go here after church?” CJ said. “Miguel and Colby never have to go nowhere.” “I feel sorry for those boys,” she told him. “They’ll never get a chance to meet Bobo or the Sunglass Man. And I hear Trixie got herself a brand-new hat.”

“You’re a master of infuriating misdirection,” said CJ. “I didn’t ask about whether you feel sorry for Miguel and Colby. I specifically asked for the reason why we’re going to this place. Once again you muddy the waters by talking about a bunch of irrelevant things. Why can’t you give me the basic respect of answering my questions in a straightforward way? I’m a child. I want clarity and honesty. And you’re going on and on about how Trixie got herself a brand-new hat. No five-year-old boy in the history of humanity ever cared about whether or not somebody bought a hat. None. If you listened to me and engaged with me in a sincere and candid way, you would know this.”

CJ stared out the window feeling sorry for himself. He watched cars zip by on either side, watched a group of boys hop curbs on bikes. A man climbed aboard with a spotted dog. CJ gave up his seat. “How come that man can’t see?” “Boy, what do you know about seeing?” Nana told him.

“Holy crap, you couldn’t be any more condescending,” said CJ. “I ask a reasonable question and you shut me down. Let me guess: you’re going to redefine ‘seeing’ in some tortured, poetic way that only applies in this conversation.”

Nana went on, “Some people watch the world with their ears.”

“Bingo,” said CJ. “Called it.” The man said, “If you really want to know, I’m blind because of macular degeneration. It’s the deterioration of the central portion of the retina. I have what’s known as Stargardt disease, which is caused by a recessive gene.” “Really?” said CJ, warming to the topic. “That’s fascinating! That’s real information! Facts that depend not on the whims of whatever’s flitting through my nana’s head, but actual solid—” Nana interrupted him. “I said, SOME PEOPLE WATCH THE WORLD WITH THEIR EARS.” The blind man and CJ shared a silent moment of understanding. The man shrugged. CJ nodded in resignation.

“That’s a fact. Their noses, too,” the man said, sniffing at the air. “That’s a mighty fine perfume you’re wearing today, ma’am.” Nana squeezed the man’s hand and laughed her deep laugh.

“Amazing,” said CJ. “Once again, she finds a way to make it all about her.”

Two older boys got on next. CJ watched as they moved on by and stood in back. “Sure wish I had one of those,” he said. Nana set down her knitting. “What for? You got the real live thing sitting across from you. Why don’t you ask the man if he’ll play us a song?”

“No wonder grandpa died early,” said CJ. “Your disingenuous responses to my reasonable statements would make anyone long for an early grave. I’m just saying I wish I could listen to music on headphones. I’m not even asking for it, or whining for it. I’m just acknowledging it’s just a nice thing to have. But you won’t even let me express my own desires in a plainspoken way. Instead, you’re putting me in the supremely awkward social situation of asking a stranger to play a song for me. And is that really your long-term solution? Instead of me getting an iPod, I should have this guitar dude accompany me everywhere and play music? Your feigned whimsy and oblique way of never actually answering my questions makes you one of the most insidious villains in children’s literature. Okay, fine, Jesus, I’ll ask the guy to play, since you’re giving me that look.”

CJ didn’t have to. The guitar player was already plucking strings and beginning to sing. “To feel the magic of music,” the blind man whispered, “I like to close my eyes.” Nana closed hers, too.

When everyone had their eyes closed, CJ slipped off the bus without anyone seeing him except Mr. Dennis. But Mr. Dennis seemed to understand. As the bus rumbled away, CJ felt a massive relief rush over him. “Holy crap,” he said to himself. “It’s like getting out of jail.”

Here’s some good news that I haven’t mentioned on the blog yet. I just started co-hosting a podcast with Matt Bird, author of the brand-new screenwriting/novel-writing advice book The Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers (which you should go out and buy right now).

For years I’ve been a fan of Matt’s storytelling advice blog. I’ve gleaned insights from it, recommended it to other writers, and even shamelessly cribbed from it for the writing classes I’ve taught. Now Matt has boiled down the essence of his enlightening-but-sprawling blog into a tight, super-useful, enjoyable book.

(I’ve commented a lot on the blog, too, and even did a series of guest posts about all the crafty techniques Star Wars employs to convince us Luke Skywalker is a great hero, and not “whiny” as some critics lazily characterize him. Here is part 1, part 2, part 3, and a final tangent).

What’s the podcast about? Well, it turns out that although I agree with most of what Matt says, we also have significant disagreements! Every week Matt brings up some storytelling advice from his book, I disagree, and then we argue and banter about it—entertainingly, I hope. Sometimes I’ll talk Matt around to my point of view. Sometimes Matt will convert me to his. Sometimes we’ll discover a new truth together. You can subscribe to the Secrets of Story Podcast here. Leave a review, too, if you’re so inclined!

The first episode has us disagreeing about one of Matt’s recent blog posts, Channel Master Thespian. Matt’s claim, as far as I can tell, is that to make your script as good as possible, you can’t imagine the best actors in the world are performing the roles you wrote, but rather the worst. He claims you need to make your script bulletproof by removing anything that could be characterized as “hammy.” I disagree with this, and try to persuade Matt that such obsessive self-doubt and perfectionism leads to timid, defensive writing. Matt argues that most audiences distrust what they’re reading or watching, and that the artist starts off at a disadvantage that s/he must quickly overcome; I don’t deny that the artist must work hard, but I feel that there is a natural amount of initial audience goodwill that can be capitalized on instead of denied. Anyway, you can hear the episode here on iTunes, or if you’re not an iTunes person, here it is on SoundCloud:

Question: how do I even know Matt? I met Matt through his amazing wife Betsy Bird, way back when The Order of Odd-Fish was published. Betsy is a children’s librarian and superblogger, and way back in 2009 she did a great interview with me on her essential children’s literature blog Fuse #8. She’s also the author of one of my daughters’ favorite picture books, Giant Dance Party, and she co-wrote Wild Things! Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature, which is an inside look at some of the unruly personalities and untold stories about the folks who write children’s literature (sometimes quite scandalous!). She also has a humor anthology for girls coming out in Spring 2017 called Funny Girl, with contributors like Raina Telgemeier, Cece Bell, Jenni Holm, Rita Williams-Garcia, Shannon Hale, and more!

Quite a couple, the Birds. Two blogs and four books between the two of them. They used to live in New York and were long-distance friends, but last year they moved to the Chicago area and Betsy now works with my wife Heather, both of them at the Evanston Public Library!

They say to hold your friends close, and your enemies closer. I’m of the philosophy that you should hold your talented and productive friends even closer than your enemies. So I’m glad that the paths of the Birds and the Kennedys have converged! May they never diverge!

Now go listen to the podcast, fool! Only fifty or so days left of America, so let’s listen to podcasts!

My niece Freya found this in the street the day after the election. She wrote, “The anger I have feels so righteous that it’s difficult to replace it with optimism and courage. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be brave. Today I’m in mourning.”

Me too.

Eight years ago, I wrote an elated post celebrating the election of Barack Obama. I really thought the U.S. had turned a corner. I wasn’t naive. I knew there were problems the U.S. Deep intractable ones that aren’t solvable overnight. Some of those problems became worse, as the Republican party radicalized and Obama’s management of the economic wreckage left behind by Bush did not work fast enough (thanks partially to an utterly intransigent Republican party that blocked almost everything Obama did, holding the budget hostage and forcing a credit downgrade). Even still I had a lot of hope. And Obama ended up being a fantastic President. Last week I voted for Hillary Clinton.

Eight years later, I now realize how complacent I’ve become. I knew injustice happens, even though it doesn’t really happen to me. I knew that women and people of color, and especially women of color, get a raw deal in this country. And as a white man, I profit off it without lifting a finger.

A few weeks ago I tweeted, “Hermione is so bossy and shrill! That’s why I’m voting for Baron Harkonnen” as a joke. But apparently that’s how white America actually feels. And make no mistake, this is white people’s fault. Don’t recite to me statistics about how a nonzero percentage of people of color voted for the wrong guy. That’s a rounding error in comparison. White men and women, who make up 70% of this country, overwhelmingly voted for a monster.

So now it’s time to figure out what to do next.

Lucy and Ingrid are 7 and 5 years old and they’re enthralled with Harry Potter (of course). We’ve been reading our way aloud through the series, book by book, and I’m now reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to them. Every year we have a Halloween party where all the neighborhood kids come, and this year Lucy wanted to be Hermione, so we thought we’d throw the party with a Harry Potter theme! (Ingrid preferred to dress up as Saorise, the selkie from the movie Song of the Sea, but she was still on board. She’s the one in the video who is sprawled out on the couch, too pooped to participate.)

You can check out Lucy’s guided tour in the video above. Unfortunately, once the party got underway, I was too distracted and sociable to take many pictures! (I was also helping to run the “haunted house” that we’d made in the basement, which started out as a cart ride through Gringotts, until an alarm got tripped, and the kids have to crawl through a tunnel to escape the vengeful goblins, which unfortunately led to an Azkaban swarming with dementors! Many children screamed that day.)

Who were Heather and I dressed as? Well, Professor Trelawney and Professor Snape, naturally. Oh, come on, somebody must have shipped these two! It’s not out of the question!

Have you seen these wizards? VERY DANGEROUS.

The thing that took the most work were the candles floating in midair. We made about twenty of them. More labor intensive than I expected, although they were nothing more than cardboard tubes with glue-gun dribbles down the sides to simulate melted wax, all painted white, with an electric mini-candle stuck in the top, hung from the ceiling with fishing line. Hat tip to Pins and Things for the idea!

Some wanted posters for Sirius Black and Bellatrix Lestrange. Speaking of Sirius Black, there’s his head in the fireplace, just like in books 3 and 4!

Here’s some Hogwarts students just hanging out in the stairwell. Not everyone was in-universe. Some upstart telekinetic girl from Stranger Things made an appearance as well.

Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of all the other great costumes that night: the father-and-son Han Solos, the impeccable Mrs. Weasley, the Sirius Black, the Alexander Hamilton, Link and Zelda, and more! In any case, another champion Halloween. Already looking forward to next year!

I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. In high school, I used to go to the Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts all the time. The DFT is where I first saw David Lynch on the big screen. It’s where I learned about Jane Campion, Werner Herzog, Akira Kurosawa, so many great filmmakers. There was no Internet to speak of in the late 80s and early 90s. Video stores were a mixed bag, to put it mildly. So if you were fascinated by great and strange movies, and you lived around Detroit, then there were only a few theater options: the Main Art in Royal Oak, the Maple in Bloomfield Hills, and the Detroit Film Theatre. The DFT was my favorite. Just look at it:

With that buildup, you can just imagine my enthusiasm when I got the opportunity to bring the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival to the Detroit Film Theatre! Back on August 26 and 27, we showcased a “Best Of The 90-Second Newbery” screening at the very same place where I used to thrill to Wild At Heart and Touch of Evil!

My co-host was the hilarious, brilliant, and very game Maria Dismondy, author of picture books such as Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun and The Juice Box Bully. Check out the video of her and me at the top of this post, doing the opening song-and-dance of What Would John Newbery Do? She’s a natural!

We got good crowds on both Saturday and Sunday. I hope that this leads to future screenings at the Detroit Film Theatre . . . and more 90-Second Newbery entries from the Detroit area!

The fact that this happened at all is due to the enthusiastic advocacy of my old friend Ronica Bhattacharya, who under the name Ronica Dhar wrote a great, highly-praised book called Bijou Roy that St. Martin’s published a few years ago. And the folks who worked at the DFT who actually made the show happen—Emily Bowyer, and Gavin, Jody, Mary, and Lindsay—were so friendly and helpful and a pleasure to work with. Thank you, everyone!

After the show Ronica and I went with another friend to La Rondinella, an amazing restaurant in Detroit’s Eastern Market that’s run by my friend-since-childhood-who-grew-up-across-the-street-from-me David Mancini. The last time I wrote about Dave, back in 2009 (check out the pictures of what we looked like as children, compared to what we’re like now!), it was the one-year anniversary of his pizzeria Supino. Supino is still going strong (and is still some of the best pizza I’ve ever had, along with San Francisco’s Ragazza and Gialina), and La Rondinella blew me away. If you live anywhere near Detroit, you have to go to La Rondinella. The best. Just the best. And the prices are mysteriously, seemingly impossibly low!

It was a great time in Detroit. I always love coming back, seeing family and old friends from high school.

That said, wild horses couldn’t drag me to this year’s 25th high school reunion. I mean, nostalgia has limits.

A few months ago I found something terrific on the Internet. A group of super-talented people had taken the first chapter of The Order of Odd-Fish and recorded it as an audio drama, complete with sound effects, music, narrator, different actors for all the parts, everything! I was floored by how good it was. Such engaged and committed performances! The sound and music and editing were so well-done! You can hear Part 1 through the video above; parts 2 and 3 are below.

Naturally I had to get in touch with the person behind this!

Her name is Kirsten, and she’s a 21-year-old voice actor and writer (you can follow her on Tumblr at owlyvoices.tumblr.com for more voice acting, plus updates and casting calls for Order of Odd-Fish and other projects). I asked her why she chose this book and she wrote back:

Well, I’ve been a big fan of Order of Odd-Fish for a few years now (I’ve read it at least 9 times, honestly) . . . I really wanted to hear what these amazing characters would sound like if they had actual, audible voices, and I wanted to try and introduce the book to other people, too.

I first found the book at my public library about 5 or 6 years ago when I was looking for something to do a book report on. I thought the cover looked really weird (it was the hardcover edition), and the synopsis seemed pretty interesting, so I went ahead and checked it out. Now, it’s my favorite book, and I actually own two copies.

First of all: thank you! Secondly: hooray for public libraries! It’s inspiring for me when folks just find my book randomly, on their own, and end up digging it.

Here’s part 2 of the recording:

I asked Kirsten what particular challenges she had in recording this. Kirsten wrote back,

For me, there were three layers of challenges. First, I had to type up the first chapter of the book so that the voice actors would have a script to follow. I actually missed a few lines here and there and didn’t catch them until the actors had already sent me their completed lines, whoops. Then, as the narrator, I had to try and not flub up anywhere (I flubbed a lot, though), and try to make my voice sound half as interesting as the book was. Finally, as the editor, I had the challenge of trying to fit everyone’s lines in where I wanted them, so that it sounded natural and had good timing. Since everyone recorded using different audio equipment and settings, too, I had to try and edit everything to sound at least similar enough that it was possible the characters were all in the same room together. Oh, and finding just the right royalty-free music and sound effects was pretty hard, too!

Fantasy, who plays Jo on the recording, talked about the recording too:

The challenges I faced would have to be trying not to laugh. Haha. It is a fun book to read through if you want to get a good laugh out of. Also trying to get the emotions so it matches the character but it was a fun process because I then get to see what ways I can portray this character so it fits for who she is . . . I learned a better understanding of Jo’s character and being able to put myself in her situation. When you do whether your acting out the character or not, you get deeper and deeper into what goes on.

Leara Morris-Clark (who played the eggplant lady as well as providing additional background voices) added, “I was mostly challenged by doing the background chatter. I am not very good at that.” Nonsense, Leara! You were great, as was everyone else!

Here’s part 3 of the recording:

The director Kristen concluded with,

I learned that editing larger-scale audio is pretty hard sometimes, but actually tons of fun! And that adding music in just the right place really helps hide weird tones in audio recordings . . . As of now, we’re planning on recording a few more scenes from the book! And by “a few,” I mean . . . a lot. I really need to narrow down the choices, pick just a few. The next scene we’ll be doing will either be Sefino’s introduction (in which case, we will need to find a Sefino), or the scene from the Dust Creek Cafe (in which case, we will need to find several old people). Either way, it’s going to be a blast!

And I know it will sound great!

Thanks so much for making these recordings. I feel very lucky and honored to have my book be the focus of your talent and hard work. I can’t wait to hear more!

And folks, you can check out more of Kirsten and friends and all her great projects at owlyvoices.tumblr.com.

We did the final screening of this year’s fifth annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival at Friends Central School near Philadelphia, PA! It was co-hosted by me and the amazing prizewinning young adult author A.S. King (Please Ignore Vera Dietz, I Crawl Through It, and many other great books). I’ve loved Amy and her books ever since I first met her at an ALA event many years ago. She hilariously nailed our opening song-and-dance number (as well as all the between-movie banter)! Unfortunately there’s no recording of the opening. Too bad! The photo above will have to suffice.

I also had the opportunity to visit classrooms at Friends Central that day, to talk about The Order of Odd-Fish and being an author. It was a really welcoming vibe at this school, and the students were very engaged and energetic! Here I am at lunch with some of them earlier that day:

One of the reasons we brought the 90-Second Newbery to Friends Central was because of the numerous great movies we received from the school that year, led by teachers Alex McDonnell and Rebecca Guenther. For instance, this masterful stop-motion version of Sharon Creech’s 1995 Medal Winner Walk Two Moons:

Great stop-motion, very fluid and expressive! The cinematography was crisp and assured. I liked the resourcefulness of the materials used—the cardboard-made car, the people made of yarn, the tiny clothes they wore. And the script was tight and funny too, with committed voiceover acting: “Who do you think that was?” “I think it was a lunatic!” got a chuckle from me, and “Gran looks pretty green” was delivered really well too. The star for me: that frisky Claymation snake!

But that’s not all we got from Friends Central! There were also two versions of Richard Peck’s 1999 Honor Book A Long Way From Chicago:

This one also had good use of establishing shots and green screen. I like how it used the book’s framing device of having the child asking the father about the old days (and the child is the same one who plays Grandma Dowdel!). Grandma Dowdel’s secret wink at the “no trespassing” sign was well done. I like how they went from paddling a canoe down the river to jumping straight out of the canoe and running when the sheriff yells after them. Entertaining and accurate to the book!

Here’s the other version of A Long Way From Chicago:

Resourceful and fun! I liked how at the very beginning, the bellowing of “Chicago!!” and the zooming in on the train pulling into the station established the kids’ arrival in town, and made a good bookend at the movie’s conclusion. The characters of Joey and Mary Alice (and their situation) were deftly and efficiently introduced. I liked “Joey’s” extreme reaction to the cheese smell. The driving scene and fence-hopping scene were both pulled off quite cleverly. Good use of the green screen, especially in the canoe fishing scene. Joey, Mary-Alice, and Grandma Dowdel (with that wonderful shawl!) all had good performances, but of course the drunken sheriff stole the show!

Next up is Cynthia Kadohata’s 2005 Medal Winner Kira-Kira:

The convincing and emotional voiceover narration pushed the plot along quickly without seeming too hasty, and I like how it alternated between the voiceover narration and the purely dramatized scenes. (The girls walking past our hero gabbing about some boy in a vocal-fry drawl, “Oh my god he is so cute,” was a nice touch). Great cameo by the baby! I like the switch to black and white when Lynn dies. The conclusion, using the green screen to make it look like Katie is looking out at the ocean, making a heart over her head with her hands, was resourcefully done!

Here’s another one done with puppets—this time of Elizabeth George Speare’s 1959 Medal Winner The Witch of Blackbird Pond:

I knew I was going to love this one from the very beginning, with that bonkers music! I liked the sped-up voices which made everyone sound like they’re in “South Park”! And the dialogue is deliciously smart-aleck: “I just live in a suspicious-looking cottage,” “It must the witch that nobody ever proved is the witch,” and “I know I’ll never see you again but I hope you have a good life!” are just some of the many great lines from the witty, hyper-fast script. The cardboard sets and the clay figures on the ends of sticks (or are they pipe cleaners?) were resourcefully crafted. Ingenious!

And finally we have Mildred D. Taylor’s 1977 Medal Winner Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry:

Good script and acting. I like it when extra attention is spent on costumes like they do here. The cinematography on some of the scenes, especially the first one, is particularly well-composed. I liked the energy of the fight scene and the chaotic kinetic action of the stealing scene. Good background music through the whole thing, and it wrapped up well with the voiceover over the image of the fire!

Thanks again, everyone at Friends Central School, for hosting me and the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! And special thanks to co-host A.S. King and Alex McDonnell, Rebecca Guenther, and all the teachers and students who made me feel so welcome. And thanks to the filmmakers too! See you next year!

On April 3, 2016 we screened the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival for the first time in Rochester, New York! From the very beginning of the festival, five years ago, we’ve been getting a disproportionate number of great entries from the Rochester area. It’s high time Rochester folks stopped having to make the hours-long trek to the New York City screenings, and have the festival come to them! We did it at the Dryden Theater at the George Eastman Museum, and packed the house.

My co-host was Newbery Medal winner and Rochesterian Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard), and she was fantastic! Great comic timing, total commitment, strong singing voice, and she rolled with the punches like a pro when the audio of our opening song cut out (I also appreciated that she memorized all of her lines, and went onstage without a script—brave dedication). Here we are in the opening skit, in which Linda Sue shines as a time-traveling version of herself who has come back to warn us everyone the dystopian future the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival will cause:

Later on in the show, we also got a visit from the energetic and refreshingly silly Mr. Loops, a children’s musician from the Rochester area, who took the stage ostensibly to sing about the benefits of reading books, but kept getting sidetracked:

(Thanks to Joshua Bloodworth for shooting those videos of the show!)

At the screening, we showed not only great 90-Second Newberys from all over the country, but also many from right in Rochester. For instance, here’s one that I’ve already featured on the blog, by Devin Grover of the Rochester’s Animation Workshop—it’s his stop-motion version of the vignette “The Garden” from Arnold Lobel’s 1973 Honor Book Frog and Toad Together:

As I’ve said before, I love the way this is animated, with Frog and Toad both coming alive with many little motions, blinking and fidgeting and gesturing! Marvelous attention to detail, right down to the lushly-drawn backdrops, background music and sound effects, and the vocal performances too. I can’t wait to see what Devin and the Animation Workshop make for next year!

Here’s another stop-motion movie we got from the Rochester area, this time done with Legos! It’s by the arts and technology educational group ArtsROC, and it’s of Lloyd Alexander’s 1969 Medal Winner The High King:

That’s quite elaborate, high-production value Lego stop motion! And not just a technical achievement: those are some hilarious voice performances too, totally capturing the spirit of the books, with the give-and-take between Taran and Eilonwy in full force (“Who knew a sword would reign supreme?” “I did, that’s why I got it!”) and all the other characters too. It ambitiously sums up not just The High King but the entire Chronicles of Prydain in one movie! And the “Day the Music Died” song was cleverly rewritten for the occasion.

The 90-Second Newbery owes a lot of its success to Deb Ross, who runs the family events website Kids Out And About (covering not just Rochester, but many cities!). I came to meet Deb and her husband when their daughters Madison and Ella made a bunch of fantastic 90-Second Newbery movies in the early years (and even crashed in their upstairs bedroom a few nights back then . . . thanks!). Madison and I even did our own version of “Between Two Ferns” a couple of years back at Rochester Community TV, with the help of my other Rochester partners and RCTV folks Carol White Llewellyn and Joshua Bloodworth. This is all a roundabout way of saying that Madison and Ella and their friends did a great adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1941 Honor Book The Long Winter:

Brisk, entertaining, satisfying! Good use of olde-tymey violin and chilly wintry wind sounds throughout. I love the way the guys are continually scarfing down pancakes while the other guy insists “we’re starving!” Resourceful use of actual snowy weather for the exterior shots, and the guy who gives up the wheat was delightfully acted. But of course the funniest line was the final one, the exultant “We can go back to our normal 19th century routine of drudgery and farm work!”

Every summer Rochester Community Television (RCTV) and Rochester-based Writers and Books, led by Joshua Bloodworth, put on a moviemaking camp in which they make a bunch of great 90-Second Newbery movies that are always a cut above. I especially like how they always make sure to put a weird twist on the material—as they do here, with a clever reversal of the premise of Jean Craighead George’s 1960 Honor Book My Side of the Mountain:

I like how the filmmakers made their premise clear right away in the voiceover part in the beginning, while our hero is writing his letter in the hubbub of the classroom. Maybe my favorite part: “That was a lot of work…. for them” with a pan over to the workers. The tour from of the house (all inside that tree?!) was very amusing too, especially in the bathroom. “What do you do for food?” “What do you think? I hired a butler!” was funny, especially since all his “fancy food” is just chips on a tray. Great performances from everyone. And that peregrine falcon was to die for!

The RCTV/Writers & Books Camp also adapted Ingrid Law’s 2009 Honor Book Savvy:

Using a skeptical talk show interview (or was it a therapist?) as the framing device was a smart twist. I like how the talk show host / therapist resisted Mibs’ story every step of the way (“So now the sun’s talking to you?” followed by Mibs’ eye-rolling shrug), and how Mibs blithely blew past all her skepticism with milliennial memespeak. I also liked how the Dad-in-a-coma actually mouths the words “I’m in a coma.” The performances are assured and committed, especially from Mibs, who carries this whole thing with her enthusiastic, buoyant energy!

The last entry by RCTV/Writers & Books Camp was of Pam Muñoz Ryan’s novel Esperanza Rising. Now, while it might be true that Pam Muñoz Ryan has won a Newbery Honor in 2016 for Echo, she didn’t get any Newbery love for Esperanza Rising! Disqualifying as an entry for the film festival? Whatever, this movie is a goodie, so I’ll let it slide:

It was a stroke of brilliance to do “Esperanza Rising” in the style of a telenovela! The opening credits are marvelous—that wind machine blowing everyone’s hair while the music from “The Young and the Restless” plays and everyone turns around dramatically in black-and-white! The dramatic music throughout was great. I like the melodramatic arc this movie finds for Esperanza, from snotty-girl-who-can’t-even-sweep-properly to scrappy fighter. The histrionic acting from everyone was a hoot. The conclusion, with its slow-motion reunion in the field, and Esperanza flying up into the inspiring blue sky, was satisfying too. Great work!

Hmmm. Now, we’ve already been over the fact that Esperanza Rising didn’t win a Newbery. Neither did Firefly Hollow by Alison McGhee, but that didn’t stop Eian-Gabriel Sinclair from making this absolutely charming stop-motion:

OK, OK, even though it didn’t win a Newbery, I’ll allow it! I love the charming and painstaking stop-motion animation with the beautifully-crafted clay figures. And the original music was quite well-done too! (As a matter of fact, after the show I got to meet the maker of this movie, Eian-Gabriel Sinclair, and he gave me his own handmade illustrated history of filmmaking. Thanks again for that, Eian-Gabriel!)

It turns out that Rochester is a hotbed of stop-motion talent. Here’s yet another one, by Ginger Veneziani Flowe. It’s of Patricia Reilly Giff’s 2003 Honor Book Pictures of Hollis Woods:

So much beautiful artistry here. I knew I was in good hands from the very start, when the 3-dimensional wire-and-hair Hollis breaks away from the fading, gradually erased two-dimensional stick figures in the background, subtly demonstrating the character’s alienation. When the “W” of Hollis’ last name turns upside-down to form the mountain of the “mountain of trouble,” I thought that was a brilliant stroke! And then when that mountain starts getting filled in and complicated with other details, I was even more impressed. The voiceovers were sensitive and well-done, the music well-chosen. When Stephen and Hollis embrace near the end, I felt more emotion than I reasonably should feel when two wire figures embrace! Bravo!

Last but not least, I also received two versions of Kate DiCamillo’s 2001 Honor Book Because of Winn-Dixie from Clifton, NY:

I liked the idea of retelling the crisis moment in Because of Winn-Dixie as a special news bulletin! Special extra points for when the anchorman loses his objective cool in the middle of it and bursts into outraged emotion. Original and fun!

And that’s it for this year’s Rochester screening of the 90-Second Newbery! Thanks again to Linda Sue Park for being a superb co-host; to Mr. Loops for his fun song and irrepressible attitude (he serenaded everyone while they were in line to enter the show!); to Deb Ross of KidsOutAndAbout, for a million things; Carol White Llewellyn, for a million more (check out her award-winning series Conversations With Creatives, on which I was once a guest); Joshua Bloodworth of RCTV, who filmed the show excerpts we saw at the top of the post; the folks at Writers and Books, especially Sally Bittner Bonn, Joe Flaherty, and Chris Fanning; the folks at George Eastman Museum and the Dryden Theater, especially Eliza Kozlowski, Kellie Fraver, and Jurij Meden; sponsor Delta Airlines, especially Katie Carroll; and sponsor Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library, especially Rebecca Fuss and Ned Davis. And of course thank you to all the young filmmakers and their friends, family, and teachers who helped out and encouraged them!

Let’s close it up with a montage of all the great movies we showed at the screening that day. I’m already looking forward to what you’ll make for next year, Rochester!

I know, I know! I’m still way behind bon logging about these screenings, but now that I’ve finished with the 2016 season of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, I finally have a chance to catch up! I’ll report on the Rochester, NY and Philadelphia screenings soon, but first let’s talk about February 20, 2016’s screening of the fifth annual 90-Second Newbery at the Tacoma Public Library, co-hosted by me and Tacoma’s own hilarious Doug Mackey. There’s our opening skit and song-and-dance, above!

Tacoma always makes great movies for the film festival every year, and this year didn’t disappoint. Check out this animated version of E.B. White’s 1953 Honor Book Charlotte’s Web, as adapted by Levi, Charity, and Israel of the Film Club at the Tacoma Public Library:

I love the idea of doing the adaptation of Charlotte’s Web in an anime style. The art is impressive, there’s some skillful voiceover acting, and I particularly loved the part where Wilbur turns all the colors of the rainbow!

Every year I get a great movie from Tacoma’s Rosemary Sissel, and here she knocks it out of the park with her adaptation of Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s 1968 Honor Book The Egypt Game:

I love the snobby way April was played, and how the movie follows the whole arc of her character, even burning the eyelashes at the end (nice touch!). Melanie’s chipper bubbliness was perfect too. The script was brisk and funny (“conveniently located in the backyard of the local creepy guy! nobody will ever find us!” “except me, heh heh heh”). The flourishes that the kidnapper does with his knife before attacking April were quite funny, and April really puts her all into that scream! But maybe my favorite part was how the creepy guy keeps his beard on a table while he’s sleeping, and hastily puts it on after he wakes up to save April. And I like how after he saves her, he starts screaming as though SHE’S attacking HIM… (also, very resourceful to have the same person playing both the murderer and Melanie in the same scene! That must’ve been the quickest costume change of all time…)

I love it when filmmakers put a weird twist on the material, and here Zoe, Simone, and Dori of Burping Toad Films do just that with Karen Cushman’s 1996 Medal Winner The Midwife’s Apprentice—which here has a more modern occupation—ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Telemarketer’s Apprentice:

Funny, swift and on-point all the way through, not a single wasted shot! I liked the “opposite day” way our hero gets fired, and the adult’s voice on the boy for “Mr. Henry” was strangely funny. And at the end, is Beatrice’s voice begging for her job back coming from . . . the phone? That is . . . is she TELEMARKETING THE TELEMARKETER!? Wheels within wheels!

Lloyd Alexander’s 1966 Honor Book The Black Cauldron has had many 90-Second Newbery adaptations, but never one so elaborate or thorough as this one, impressively done in stop-motion Legos by a young filmmaker known only as “Minifigure Clone 267-87”:

I love the total environments this movie creates, in which every single thing we see is a Lego of one kind of another. The figures themselves are well-chosen and the animation was a real kick, especially in the chase and battle scenes with the cauldron-born! The epic music throughout was a good choice too, so relentless and stirring!

Every year I get a lot of wonderful movies from Tacoma’s Seabury School, and this year was no exception. It’s always hard to choose which ones to show for the screening, I want to show them all! Here are the two that I ended up showing at the Tacoma screening—first, this adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s 2014 Medal winner Flora & Ulysses by Vardaan Kumar and friends:

I like how this movie staged the high-stakes opening scene of the vacuum nearly sucking up the squirrel. I also like the cinematic way it “follows” Flora, with over-the-shoulder camera, into the house to her mother, who ignores her pointedly. The way the girl who plays Flora placed Ulysses next to the “I’m hungry” thought bubble was clever. The ning-nong doorbell was amusing, and I like how the costuming department took the time to give “blind” William dark glasses and a cane. The search scene at the end was tense and I liked the tension of the handheld camera running along with them.

Also from Seabury, E. L. Konigsburg’s 1968 Medal Winner From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, as adapted by Kyle Maitlen:

Resourceful use of that white cardboard for the bus! Great performance for the “angel” statue too. I like the way Jamie says “Let’s do research!” while pumping his fists. I also liked all the “files” that are laid out at the end, and how quickly the mystery is solved as soon as Jamie says “baloney.” Well done!

Thanks again for a great film festival, Tacoma! Special thanks to all the folks at the Tacoma Public Library, especially teen services librarian Sara Sunshine Holloway, and my fantastic co-host Doug Mackey. Thanks to my friend Joe Fusion for filming the opening skit. And of course the biggest thanks to all the young filmmakers, and their teachers and families and mentors who encouraged them and came out for the screening! I can’t wait to see what you cook up for next year!

To sign off, here’s a final montage of all the movies we showed in this year’s 90-Second Newbery screening in Tacoma:

OK, I admit it, I’m definitely really too late blogging about this. But better late than never! On Sunday, February 21st we had a great 90-Second Newbery Film Festival screening in Portland, OR! We did it at the studios of Portland Community Media TV, and it was a perfect fit because every year PCMTV submits some fantastic movies. I was thrilled to do the screening at their space!

The screening was co-hosted by me and my longtime Portland partner-in-crime, the young Jacob von Borg. The first few years I did the 90-Second Newbery in Portland, fantastic local authors co-hosted it with me, such as Laini Taylor and Dale Basye. They were great! But Jacob has submitted a bunch of 90-Second Newberys every year, plus he’s a fan of The Order of Odd-Fish and he and siblings have done incredible fan art of it, so I thought, why not have Jacob be the co-host? It turned out to be a smart move: he’s fantastic! Here we are in the opening skit:

Let’s check out some of the great movies from Portland that were featured at the screening! Here’s Ruth Gannett’s 1949 Honor Book My Father’s Dragon—done entirely in Claymation by Anya Schooler:

Amazing! The level of craft in this is through the roof—the claymation is so fluid and expressive! The style looked like it was made by the Wallace and Gromit people. I love how Anya is able to signal so much subtle emotion and storytelling power out of the smallest twitch of clay: the quirk or scrunch of an eyebrow, an upraised finger or a waving of arms. The set was beautiful and resourceful (that flowing water!) and the sound design was so precise and perfect. And when the dragon licked the man and the man hugged the dragon, it was truly an earned emotional moment. (And oh, that awesome determined look in the dragon’s eyes before he took off!)

Here’s another movie made in cooperation with Portland Community Media TV, an adaptation of E.B. White’s 1953 Honor Book Charlotte’s Web:

Another winner! That was clever how the scenes were interspersed by the flipping pages of the book itself. The stop-motion animals in the background of the puppet narrator was exactly the kind of detail that gives a movie great texture. I love the way Fern’s uncle delivers the line “Wilbur, you’re gonna die tonight!” with those clouds scooting around in the background, and then licking his lips grotesquely, as the bass tones underline the gravity of Wilbur’s situation. “Wilbur” was so cute, Charlotte’s death was somehow hilarious, and the crowd’s emotional reactions were great (and that one kid’s fake mustache!). Great wrap-up with the spider babies, and while everyone is saying “goodbye!” I like how one kid says it in a threatening tone, and another just blurts “how you doing?”

Next up is an adaptation of William Steig’s 1983 Honor Book Doctor DeSoto, also by the folks at Portland Community Media TV:

I loved the busy long shot at the beginning, with the stop-motion animals all scurrying around in the daily work of Dr. Desoto’s office. And then it launched straight into a charming, assured, beautifully-done sock puppet show, complete with funny voices and great lines (“Yeah, but you’re not the one who has to go in his mouth!” “Mmm, I love raw mice with salt!”) I like how the passage of time is shown by making the moon sail across the sky and the sun rise while Dr. DeSoto and his wife discuss the problem. The fast-forward way that the puppets twitch and dance was was a nice touch. Great work!

Here’s Grace Lin’s 2010 Honor Book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon as adapted by local Portland homeschooler’s Anneke, Naomi, and Ilse:

What an elaborate, beautiful, well-told adaptation of “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” this is! I’m in awe of the wonderfully elaborately made puppets! (That dragon! The king! So many details!) And I love the way the filmmakers use perspective to make the bridge look like it’s really trailing off to the moon. I like how they took the time and care to make the backgrounds look good too, especially when Minli meets the old man in the moon . . . it has a real outer-space feel. And the music sounds great too!

My co-host Jacob von Borg and his family make a 90-Second Newbery every year (sometimes even a few of them!) and this year was no exception. Here’s their take on Katherine Paterson’s 1978 Medal winner Bridge to Terabithia:

I love the ridiculous bizarre voices and the breezy way they handled the story. (Good lines too: “fight evil monsters—like my mother?”) I particularly liked the drinkin’ mother’s heartless way of announcing that Leslie was dead—and how she thought Jesse was dead too, and didn’t seem to care too much! Jesse’s back-and-forth sprint of grief was funny too. And the tag with the wig at the end was perfect!

Thanks so much, everyone at Portland Community Media TV and Jacob von Borg and all the filmmakers and audience who came! Portland is always a high point of the 90-Second Newbery tour for me every year. Here’s the final montage we used at the end of the night, that brought together clips of every movie we featured that night:

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On Saturday, February 27 we screened the fifth annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival at the Central Library in Minneapolis! It’s the second time we’ve done the show in Minnesota. And just like last year, this is one of the most engaged, enthusiastic, in-it-to-win-it crowds of filmmakers and fans in my 90-Second Newbery tour!

Minnesota author Kelly Barnhill (The Witch’s Boy, The Mostly True Story of Jack, Iron-Hearted Violet) joined me again to co-host. Not only is Kelly a firecracker onstage, she also saved the show when we had a technical glitch—while I was frantically rebooting the computer, Kelly gracefully stepped in and did 5-minute improv / standup / consciousness-raising session with the audience. What could’ve been a disaster turned into a highlight of the show!

At the end of the show, we gathered all the filmmakers onstage for a group picture. I’m draped glamorously on the floor in front of them:

At these 90-Second Newbery screenings, I like to show a mix of movies: roughly half are the best I’ve received from all over the country, and half purely local entries. We led off this year’s screening with a movie I’ve shown all over: an adaptation of Virginia Hamilton’s 1989 Newbery Honor Book In The Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World, by Tristan Stephan:

As I said in my previous post about this movie, all the puppets are beautifully drawn and intricately articulated, and I particularly loved the hilarious way Odin kicks Ymir’s head straight off! The level of craftsmanship on this one is impressive. I also appreciated that it’s an adaptation of one of the more obscure Newbery honorees. Amazing!

Here’s another great entry from Minneapolis, by Miles, Grace, and Kaden from Worthington Middle School. It’s of Kate DiCamillo’s 2004 Medal Winner, The Tale of Despereaux:

Ambitious, resourceful, and entertaining! I loved how they made Despereaux look small from the very first shot, with that cleverly-deployed green screen of him next to a mouse hole. . . and then followed it up immediately with a really impressive stop-motion animation of the mice in council! I also liked how they used the basement as the “dungeon.” The swordfight was goofy fun, and I liked how cutting off the tail resulted in not screams of pain, but giggles!

Next up: Gary Paulsen’s 1988 Honor Book Hatchet, as adapted by Andrew, Ryan, and Cameron of Inver Grove Heights Middle School:

Very creative to tell the story of Hatchet in the style of a news report, Anchorman-style! It was wonderfully absurd that the the hatchet was clearly a tennis racket. So many great moments in this one, like the stuffed panda bear attacking Brian in the forest, and how the reporter keeps snarling “Gnarly dude!” or “Radical,” and how Brian prefaces every anecdote with the phrase “I remember it just like it was yesterday” before he gazes significantly off into the distance. It was also entertaining how the reporter “signs off” with a mic drop . . . wait, right before he MURDERS BRIAN? This movie is insane in all the right ways.

Here’s another Hatchet, this time by Leo, Jackson, and Galen of Sanford Middle School:

I like the twist of making it a step-by-step “guide to surviving in nature,” complete with disclaimer at the beginning. Good green screen work and voiceover making the different beats of the story clear. Perfect sound effect when he stabs the fish! And it was fun when Brian got mauled (and resourceful use of sound effect there with the bear growl!) I was amused when Brian called out to the passing plane way up in the air, “Look 35,000 feet below!”

Here’s another survival story, but this time about a mouse: William Steig’s 1977 Honor Book Abel’s Island, as adapted by Ruthie Morgan:

Quite resourceful to do the entire story all in one bedroom! It proves how you can do a lot with a little: using the flashing of the lights going on and off to simulate a storm, using blue scarves to represent flying water . . . and those were both cool boats that Abel made!

Here is Lake Middle School’s adaptation of Richard Peck’s 1999 Honor Book A Long Way From Chicago, which is about the various antics of two children and their Grandma Dowdel in the 1930s:

This one starts with a literal BANG, with the awesome special effects of the privy blowing up! I liked the “no unnecessary product placement” sign followed by the blatant display of the McDonald’s bag. The fast-forward effect was used well to get the accelerated oldey-tymey movie effect. The performances of the kids are suitably baffled and the performance of Grandma Dowdel is suitably smug and cantankerous. Great job with music too!

Next up is Highlands Elementary’s adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s 1978 Medal Winner Bridge to Terabithia:

Goofy and inspired! I loved the “Prince Tarian” dog and I appreciated how the filmmakers actually went outside in the woods to film the Terabithia scenes. Jesse’s family is hilariously perfunctory about Leslie being dead—indeed, his little sister seems to think it’s a “happy ending!”

Next up is the “Cookies” vignette from Arnold Lobel’s 1973 Honor Book Frog and Toad Together, as adapted by Josie, James, Erik, Kai, and Madeleine:

Good costumes for Frog and Toad! Actually . . . those masks are a little terrifying! The way they hop about is very frog-and-toad-like, I liked that. And I enjoyed how the birds descend upon the cookies at the end!

Here’s another not-so-well-known Newbery honoree, Sharon Creech’s 2001 Honor Book The Wanderer, as adapted by Anna and Alexia:

Here’s another example of doing a lot with limited resources—I liked how the difference between “Cody” and “Brian” and “Bompi” can be signified by a red or yellow or black shirt. I loved the cardboard boat the SS Awesome, and the juggling bit was fun too, especially with the admission of “sort of” at the end. The expressions after the line “we also know how to draw” bit were good too. Well done!

Angel, Andrew, Armann, and Derrick made this adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1963 Medal Winner A Wrinkle in Time:

I liked the creepy outfits of the witches, and the crazy hyperspace effect that took them to Camazotz! When Charles bows down to IT, it’s legitimately unsettling, and I liked IT’s voice. Pretty funny when Meg kicks IT . . . and the disembodied brain splits into two pieces. Cool Star-Trek-style beam-me-up credits!

Next up: E.L. Konigsburg’s 1968 Medal Winner From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by Gavin K., Jenny R., and Clark W. of St. Paul Academy and Summit School:

The script was engaging and the acting really pulled me into the story. The quick cutaway when Jamie says he is a gambler is quite funny. I like the montage when they are running away, and the courtly, super-polite exchange “To the library, Lady Claudia? To the library, Sir James!” Funny and committed and believable acting from everyone!

Malaya N., Tylyn H., and Symira H-C. of the FAIR School in Crystal, MN did this take on Louis Sachar’s 1999 Medal Winner Holes:

A clever idea to tell the story of Holes as a kind of talk show! Bonus points for how it was the two girls on the right who did all the talking, while the girl on the left said almost nothing! The total commitment they had to the idea of telling the story in terms of a morning show, with the appropriate mannerisms and vocal cadences, was so well done. The high five for Stanley’s bad luck was hilarious. I love how the girl on the right drinks straight from the pitcher. And especially how when the girl on the left finally says something (“It’s like I don’t even know what to say . . . it’s like . . . “) the whole thing just cuts off! The energy and enthusiasm and verve of this short put it over the top.

Here’s a different version of Holes, by Bryce, Brayden, Hunter, and Brody of Oneka Elementary School

This quick, precise narration told the story crisply, not a word wasted! I liked the resourcefulness of the “shovel” made out of construction paper. The green-screen way that Stanley and Zero fall into the hole was clever. I like the dilating “wipe” effect that was consistently used to switch scenes, giving the whole thing a kind of rhythm. Good silent acting all throughout by the students. Great job!

Oh! And before we go, one more Hatchet, by Noah of Glacier Hills Elementary:

Resourceful green-screen work, and I liked especially the part where Brian is attacked by the wild animal!

We also got some great movies from Anwatin Middle School, but they made it such that I can’t embed them on the page. You should check out Britany’s Tale of Despereaux (made with dolls!), and Kjersten’s Ella Enchanted (made with string!) and Meghan and Jenna’s Frog and Toad Together (done with paper cut-outs!).

And of course, here’s the final montage of all the movies. Thanks to all the filmmakers, students, teachers, families, and everyone who attended. Thanks again to Kelly Barnhill for co-hosting and to Jen Verbrugge and Jen Nelson of the Minnesota Department of Education for making it all possible. And thanks to the Central Library in Minneapolis for letting us put it all on. See you next year!

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It’s been a whirlwind of 90-Second Newbery Film Festival screenings! I’ve already blogged about our screenings in San Antonio, Chicago, Oakland and San Francisco; I haven’t yet recapped Tacoma, Portland, and Minneapolis, but I will soon!

In the meantime: on March 5 and 6 we did back-to-back screenings at the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library. At the NYPL I was lucky enough to get the hilarious Peter Lerangis as my co-host, the author of the Seven Wonders series—a series for which the concluding book just dropped (he’s on tour promoting it now)! At the Brooklyn Public Library my co-host was the wonderful Torrey Maldonado, author of Secret Saturdays. They were stellar hosts, and we had huge crowds at both events!

I didn’t manage to get a video of the opening of the Brooklyn show with Torrey, but we did get a video of the opening of the NYPL show with me and Peter, which you can see above. Since this is the fifth year of the 90-Second Newbery, in the opening I show a short movie about the first five years of the film festival—which is interrupted by a time-traveling Peter, who has come back from five years in the future, and has disturbing news of what the 90-Second Newbery is going to become. It all ends with multiple time-travel doublecrossing, a light saber battle, and of course a song! Check out our opening at the New York Public Library above.

And here are Torrey and I with some of the young audience and filmmakers at the Brooklyn Public Library:

Aside from the movies I’m showing all over the country, what locally-made movies did we feature at the New York screenings? Check out Ossining Public Library’s adaptation of Patricia MacLachlan’s 1986 Medal Winner Sarah, Plain and Tall—but done with a twist: in science fiction style! Instead of Sarah being a mail-order bride, she’s a Vulcan! I give you Sarah, Plain and Logical:

What a brilliant idea to do Sarah, Plain and Tall with terraforming space frontiersmen instead of early American settlers! I loved the dialogue (“I mean, it HAS been six hours” and “You should try Spacebook”) and I love how deeply they committed to making the movie look good, with resourceful green screen, elaborate costumes, flying-spaceship scenes, original music, and even a “Spacebook” page made specifically for the movie! The idea of having Sarah be a Spock-like Vulcan was inspired, and I love that she has a literal PET ROCK. When they’re all singing along in Vulcan at the end, with a montage of fun activities, all of which have “Sprock” the pet rock floating weirdly in the background, I just about lost it. Brilliant work, Ossining Public Library! (And check it out—I myself have a cameo as Admiral Ackbar at the beginning!)

Next up, Lois Lowry’s 1990 Medal Winner Number the Stars, as made by Juliet and Leah:

What a breakneck ride through Number the Stars! Whoever was playing the Nazis really tore into their role with gusto. It hits all the major plot points in the book with brisk clarity, especially the trick with the funeral . . . and this probably the first mention of cocaine in 90-Second Newbery history. Great job, Juliet and Leah!

Every year we get a bunch of super 90-Second Newbery videos from Jim Adams’ class at the Foote School in New Haven, CT. Here’s the one I featured at the NYPL screening: Jasmine, Jillian, and Nick’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 2009 Medal Winner The Graveyard Book:

A really funny script! “Don’t tell the girl, but I’m actually gonna kill her friend!” and “I will never see you again. You should cry now” were ace lines. I like that the filmmakers took the time to get gravestones for the set. Fun Sleer scene too!

Last year and this year too we got submissions from the talented Parrino family who live outside New York. This first one, by Jillian Parrino, has a great twist: it’s Gail Carson Levine’s 1998 Honor Book Ella Enchanted done in the style of Star Wars!

What a bonkers, inspired idea! I love how it nails all the details specific to Star Wars, from the John Williams music and opening crawl to the resourceful use of modified cut-outs of the characters like Captain Phasma, Princess Leia, the stormtroopers, Rey, Finn, Jabba the Hutt, etc. in various environments. Funny use of the Jedi mind trick on the ogres, I mean, Jabba! And we even got a light saber duel at the end, inside Ella’s mind, against Kylo Ren! Fantastic work!

But that’s not all we got from the Parrino family. Joseph Parrino did this elaborate stop-motion Lego version of Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s 1968 Honor Book The Egypt Game:

A very thorough and complete retelling of the story! The sets were really well done (the inside of the junk shop! the junkyard in back!) The story was briskly and clearly told. The way Toby and Ken come down the fence head-first was kind of hilarious! And good background music throughout.

But wait! We have another stop-motion Lego movie! This one is by Violet and Ocean of the Brooklyn Public Library, Carroll Gardens branch, and it’s of Carl Hiaasen’s 2003 Honor Book Hoot:

The animation looks fantastic, so detailed and fluid. And the sound effects and voiceover acting really pulled it all together! I especially liked it when the owl comes zooming by in the construction site. And I thought it was funny how the alligator in the toilet was HUGE (and . . . mooed!). The protest was a great scene, so elaborate and well-done, with lots of jump cuts between the protestors giving an appropriately chaotic impression! (And I liked the chants of “We love owls! We hate pancakes!” and the picket sign that suggested she take the pancake house to Russia). It was clever the way they made the hero “swim” at the end. And I always enjoy a great homemade song over the closing credits.

Here I am with the makers of Hoot, Violet and Ocean, with their facilitator Jodi from the Carroll Gardens branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Check out their Hoot-themed T-shirts they wore especially for the event:

We also featured Ruth Sawyer’s 1937 Medal Winner Roller Skates, as adapted by Mohana Buckley, a super-talented girl who has contributed a movie almost every year of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, and Louis Sachar’s 1999 Medal Winner Holes as adapted by the folks at Camp Mel. However, both those videos are private or not shared online . . . so if you weren’t at the screening, I’m afraid you’re out of luck!

Thanks to Peter Lerangis and Torrey Maldonado for co-hosting, Anna Taylor and everyone at the New York Public Library, Paquita Campoverde and Brandon Graham and everyone at the Brooklyn Public Library, and of course all the filmmakers and friends and family who made movies and came out to the screenings! Here’s the closing montage we used to end the NYPL show, of all the movies we showed in New York and Brooklyn:

Thanks again! See you next year!

The 90-Second Newbery relies on your donations to keep going. Make your tax-deductible donation here! We are under the fiscal sponsorship of the Northwestern Settlement nonprofit.

On February 13 we did TWO 90-Second Newbery Film Festival screenings: at the Oakland Public Library Rockridge Branch (thanks, librarians Nina Lindsay and Erica Siskind!), and later at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library (thanks, librarians Christine Estrovitz and Carla Kozak!). We packed the house in both venues. Books Inc. was on hand to sell books after the SFPL screening (thanks, booksellers Summer Laurie and Katherine Megna!) And a super big thanks to the San Francisco Awesome Foundation for sponsoring the whole trip!

As always when I come to San Francisco, I had the pleasure of staying with my old friends Alisha and Sharon. Alisha is my good friend from college, and she married the amazing Sharon, who is the culinary mastermind behind the SF restaurants Gialina and Ragazza. Thus, whenever I go to San Francisco, not only do I get the pleasure of their company, but I eat like a king! And Alisha and Sharon are generous enough to throw a big party after the SFPL screening, and I get to see lots of my Bay Area friends whom I only really get to see once a year:

Sharon’s to the left of me, Alisha’s to the right of me!

I also got to catch up with my friends David and Jillian, who used to live upstairs, but have abandoned Chicago for the pleasures of California (David fled west to take a job at the Khan Academy):

I hung out with so many other old friends while in town, too many to name. I might have more friends in the Bay Area than I do in Chicago. I’m very lucky to know such great people.

But let’s talk about those 90-Second Newbery screenings! My co-host for the San Francisco screening was Marcus Ewert, the amazing author of the picture books 10,000 Dresses and Mummy Cat, both well-reviewed by my Lucy and Ingrid. He was a fantastic co-host, nailing the opening song-and-dance number and bantering with easy grace between movies. He said he’d do it next year, too, and I hope so! Thank you, Marcus!

We got a lot of great entries from the Bay Area this year! One of the standouts that we featured at the screening was E.L. Konigsburg’s 1968 Honor Book Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, by Ellie, Zara, Katie, and Grace of Everett Middle School (which I visited while I was in town!):

Such crisp and nimble cinematography! The transitions with the typewriter and the music tied everything together very well and gave a structure to it. And the acting! Jennifer the witch had a compellingly stern aspect to her (I love the way the camera edged in ominously to a closeup on her!) and Elizabeth had a cool, game-but-skeptically-standoffish vibe that was very appealing. And the last sequence, when we finally see Jennifer smile and the black-and-white blooms into full color, was a really effective way to conclude it.

But that’s not the only great movie I got from San Francisco this year! Felix and Taytum also made this great adaptation of Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain, but with a twist:

I love it when young filmmakers use the 90-Second Newberys to tell the book’s story in a different way. In the same way that Sam in the book uses his knowledge of nature to survive in the wilderness, this Sam here uses his technical skills to fly off into a whole new dimension. So many precise little insert shots of specific technical challenges he’s solving, like the shimmering jewel on the shoes and the spaceman suit and backpack. Then the whole thing kicks into overdrive when he flies! I love the space scenes best. And after that, going from super technical to back to the nature was a good touch, and the music was well-chosen. Watch out for the splendid stop-motion when the animal comes out of the hole!

I did author visits at a bunch of schools when I came to the Bay Area this year, including St. Andrews School in Saratoga. Every year I get a bunch of great 90-Second Newberys from this school, led by their great teacher Alison Halla. For instance, here’s St. Andrews’ adaptation of Kwame Alexander’s book-in-verse about basketball, The Crossover, as adapted by Abby, Amelia, and Georgia:

What a clever idea to do an all-female version of The Crossover! I thought it was a brilliant story change to make Alexis not just some random hottie, but another player on the team. The story actually works better with the change! There are some great vomiting and bloody-nose scenes. The snotty librarian was hilarious. The kissing-in-the-library scene was expertly staged. And the furiously-playing-basketball-in-the-rain scene was a masterstroke, especially when it cut from J.B.’s and Alexis’ dinner to Filthy screaming in frustrated rage in the rain.

That’s not all I got from St. Andrews. There was also Katherine Paterson’s 1978 Medal Winner Bridge to Terabithia, as adapted by Jack, David, Jarrett, and Scotch:

Oh, how I love insane versions of this book. Leslie’s death never fails to get a laugh! Her hat was the perfect amount of absurdity, and I liked lines like “I wonder what to get Leslie for Christmas. Oooh, free dogs!” Good background music throughout, rising to an inspiring crescendo when Jesse and Leslie invent Terabithia! But my favorite thing about this movie is how Jessie brings his little sister into Terabithia to make her “the new queen” . . . when Leslie’s body is not yet cold . . . when she’s still dead in the background!

Finally from St. Andrews, Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted by Claire, Juliet, Brian, and friends:

So many funny lines, so crisply shot, the story told so well! I was blown away by the comedic acting of Lucinda and Ella. Lucinda’s entrance with the ukelele singing “story of my life” cracked me up, and I loved how Lucinda kept telling the prince she was “single, very single.” The ball scene had a great updated song, and those dogs make fantastic ogres!

And finally from San Francisco, this adaptation of Kate Dicamillo’s 2004 Medal winner The Tale of Desperaux by Omara, Karina, and Lilah of Monroe Elementary School:

Fun and fast on its feet! I liked that first scene in which the rat is expertly thrown into the soup bowl from far away, and the perfunctory way the queen “dies” when the rat plops into her soup is also pretty funny. The story was told with rapid skill, with resourceful use of props and costumes (Roscuro’s hands!). And the whole thing wrapped up quite satisfyingly with that flourish at the end.

But wait! That’s not the only 90-Second Newbery screening we had that day. There was also the one in Oakland, co-hosted by me and Liam Dooley, a twelve-year-old resident of Oakland and the son of my old friend Andrea. Here’s a great write-up about it in the Oakland North, in which I am described (not for the first time) as “between his wardrobe choices and excited mannerisms, [James] had the familiar air of Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in the Harry Potter film adaptations.” I am who I am!

Wait, you say—why was Liam my co-host? Isn’t my co-host usually another children’s author? Ah, but in this case Liam had made two standout 90-Second Newbery movies, which we featured at the Oakland screening. When I asked if he would co-host, he accepted!

Here is Liam, Eamon, and Quinn’s 90-Second Newbery of Hatchet:

This movie made resourceful use of a real-life airplane cockpit, with the staticky authentic-sounding radio messages in the background! And I liked the model plane floating above the pond to give us the idea of the a real plane flying over water. Good “crash” too—and cutting straight from that to Brian trudging out of the water was a smart choice. The bow-and-arrow also looks like it was really cobbled together in the wild, and that fish — was that an ACTUAL DEAD FISH that “Brian” was holding and pretending to eat? Liam says yes!

He also did Lois Lowry’s 1994 Medal winner The Giver with his friend Thomas:

I liked the no-nonsense way this movie blew through the plot, with brisk voiceover. It got some good effects with the switching between black and white and color after Jonas steals the apple. That’s a good wig for the “sister,” and I love how The Giver looks like . . . wait, is that Kevin Kline from “A Fish Called Wanda”? Even with that, still, the best part for me is how Liam wraps up the whole movie by flatly declaring, “and he died on a mountain.” Yup, Jonas probably did!

Thanks for these movies, and for all the movies that were featured in the San Francisco and Oakland screenings of the 90-Second Newbery this year! And thanks to everyone who came out to the screenings. And thanks to the filmmakers who made the movies, and the libraries and teachers and families and friends that made it all possible. Here’s to next year!

Do you like what we do at the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival? Please support us with a tax-deductible donation. We are under the financial sponsorship of the Northwestern Settlement nonprofit.

Thanks everyone who came out to the 2016 Chicago screening of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival last Sunday! We packed the 300-seat Vittum Theater with a super-enthusiastic audience.

A huge thanks to author of The Other Felix and Booklist Online Editor Keir Graff for once again co-hosting the Chicago screening with me. Keir not only co-hosts, he and I also write the opening skit together. Unfortunately we didn’t get a usable video of this year’s Chicago opener, which commemorated the 90-Second Newbery’s fifth anniversary by looking forward to what the film festival will be like five years from now.

Keir and I played dueling time-travelers, and our opener soon erupted into a lightsaber battle that was resolved by the song “Blame Newbery!” (tune stolen from South Park’s “Blame Canada”). In the picture below, time-traveling Keir informs me who wins the 2018 Newbery Medal: Vorblop Homvaloo 9 from Jupiter, who will write the instant children’s book classic Flimglorp Jeep-Joop Foopy Fop:

Thanks to Travis Jonker of the 100 Scope Notes blog for that cover, which you can see in its full glory here. I asked Travis because his blog has a great series called Covering the Newbery in which he designs alternative covers for Newbery-winning books. Check it out!

One of the big hits of the evening was Walt Disney Magnet School’s adaptation of Rebecca Stead’s 2010 Newbery Medal winner When You Reach Me in the style of a Law And Order episode. It cleverly hit most of the book’s story beats while fulfilling the tropes Law and Order, from the “konk-konk” noise to the classic good cop/bad cop interrogation scene. I especially liked the courtroom scene at the end, in which the attorney attempts to unravel the book’s complex time-travel plot with a Glenn Beck-style chalkboard full of crazy scribblings:

I especially liked how, on her way out of the interrogation room, the “bad-cop” detective picks her cup of coffee up off the floor where she flung it, and without missing a beat begins drinking from it again with a backwards scowl at Marcus.

This year we also got a lot of great entries from Francis Xavier Warde School in Chicago. Here’s one of them that was a hit at the screening. It’s of Gary Paulsen’s 1988 Honor Book Hatchet, but with a twist: instead of its main character, Brian, getting stranded in the forest with nothing but a hatchet to help him survive, he merely gets trapped in a 7-11, where survival is, well, kind of easy. But the breakout character here is Brian’s mom, with her odd mannerism of repeatedly whacking a foil pan with a spatula:

We also got a lot of great entries from Edgewood Middle School in Highland Park, Illinois. Among them was this entertaining adaptation of Kwame Alexander’s 2015 Newbery Medal winner The Crossover, a novel-in-verse about two basketball-playing twin brothers, Filthy McNasty and J.B., who have a falling-out when J.B. gets a girlfriend:

I love the portrayal of “Miss Sweet Tea” by a boy in a wig. He really works it!

Thanks again to everyone who helped out at the screening: Laura Kollar, Mary Kate Barley-Jenkins, Tom Arvetis, and Ford Altenbern of Adventure Stage Chicago; Keir Graff, for co-hosting; Kate Babka, who helped in the tech booth with the lights and sound; Eti Berland, for being the indefatigable master of the 90-Second Newbery’s social media; Travis Jonker for the cover; Joseph Lewis for taking the pictures and video; Northwestern Settlement for being our nonprofit sponsor; and of course all of the kids, teachers, and families who made the movies and came out to watch!

Let’s wrap this up with the closing montage for the night, which features almost all the movies featured at the Chicago screening:

Thanks, Chicago! Already looking forward to next year. Next: SAN FRANCISCO and OAKLAND, this Saturday, February 13th!

A big thanks to the San Francisco Awesome Foundation for supporting 2016’s 90-Second Newbery screenings on February 13 in San Francisco and Oakland with a generous grant. (Wait . . . you want to make a tax-deductible donation to the 90-Second Newbery too? You can do it here!)

The Chicago screening of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is coming up this Sunday, January 31, 2016! It’s sold out, and there’s a wait list, but seats are always opening up, so you can get on that wait list here.

What can you expect to see at Sunday’s screening? Today I want to concentrate on three wunderkind auteurs who project a go-it-alone persona. They make videos that seem to be like one-person shows. Two of them we’ve met in previous years, so let’s lead off with the newcomer: 8-year-old Corbin Stanchfield of Lafayette, Indiana! He makes his 90-Second Newbery debut with an adaptation of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s 1992 Newbery Medal Winner Shiloh. Check it out above.

Shiloh is, of course, your standard boy-and-his-dog story, set in West Virginia. The premise of Corbin’s video: what if there are certain budget cuts in the video’s production, such that the video can’t actually be filmed in the rolling hills of West Virginia where the book is set, but rather must make do with the flat fields of Indiana? And furthermore . . . maybe the budget can’t afford, er, a dog either . . . but, well, how about a bagel? A bagel makes an acceptable substitute for a dog, right? Don’t judge too hastily! Watch the movie, this bagel is a very expressive and frisky and emotional bagel! Corbin does great work throughout too, from selling the premise to nailing the visual gags to his rural accent to the impromptu beard! You can check out more of Corbin Stanchfield’s videos at his website Corbin Films.

Another up-and-comer: Ada Grey of Chicago, who every year submits a super-elaborate 90-Second Newbery done entirely with PlayMobil figures. This year, Ada adapted Katherine Applegate’s 2013 Newbery Medal Winner The One and Only Ivan:

I love the super-complicated, meticulously-composed scenes that Ada puts together. And in terms of storytelling, Ada always lays everything out logically and clearly, which is hard to do in 90 seconds! The voiceover is brisk and witty and I love Ada’s performance as Ivan the silverback. I look forward to her submission every year, she always raises the bar every year with another great video!

Finally for today, Ava Levine of Chicago does Lois Lowry’s 1994 Medal winning chestnut The Giver:

Ava came to my attention last year with a 90-Second Newbery in the style of the opening monologue of “Saturday Night Live,” but comes into her own here with this one-woman show. Like the other movies, it was fun to see Ava play multiple roles, and I liked how she resourcefully used her hair as the Giver’s “beard.” I particularly liked the lines “I will touch you and you will be put into a kind of montage thing” and “I must run away and cause a huge problem for the society!” The montage itself was well done, with the spinning around in color. The movie definitely hit the sweet spot for me at the end, where the narrator says “But personally, I like to think he died”—THAT IS EXACTLY MY OPINION ABOUT THE END OF THE BOOK TOO, but nobody seems to agree with me on that! Thanks, Ava, for saying what must be said! Jonas totally dies at the end of that book, there’s no doubt in my mind!

Whether or not you believe Jonas died at the end of The Giver (and he did die, he’s totally dead, don’t even delude yourselves), I’m looking forward to seeing you all on Sunday!

I was on the “Write Of Your Life” Podcast a few weeks ago! Stacy Curtis interviews me about the creative process and I reveal was a “vomelette” is.

The Chicago screening of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is coming to the Vittum Theater (1012 N. Noble) this Sunday, January 31, 2016, from 3-5 pm! It’s technically sold out, but seats always open up, so if you want to come I recommend you get on the wait list here.

Here are some movies we’ve received from the Chicago area this year! Eti Berland is the superstar librarian who handles all the social media for the 90-Second Newbery (she has also, ahem, been on the Newbery committee). This year, she and Ashley Hamernik of the Evanston Public Library worked with the EPL Homeschool Group to make this great adaptation of Ingrid Law’s 2009 Honor Book Savvy in the video above!

I liked the stylish way this movie efficiently introduces the premise of the book, with the voiceover and subtitles over the intriguing images (loved that cute turtle!). And whoever played the owner of the cafe brought real energy into that firing scene. (And that was a nice waitress costume)! The electrical sound-effects paired with the lights turning on and off was a resourceful way to represent the brother’s “savvy” of having control over electricity. Everyone did a great job acting and the green-screen work was very well done! We’ll be showing this at the screening on Sunday, see you there!

And next up is Shannon Hale’s 2006 Honor Book Princess Academy by Muskaan, Suzan, Liza, Valentina, Amani, and Pia of the Niles Public Library:

Fun and ambitious! The extensive green-screen made it feel like a movie with authentic locations. That’s hard to pull off! Good cinematography, good use of music, and great acting from the star and everyone else (with a breakout performance for Tutor Olana!) The cruel girls were wonderfully nasty, the angry mob of miners was appropriately menacing, and the prince was pretty adorable. We’ll be screening this on Sunday too!

And finally we have Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1938 Honor Book On the Banks of Plum Creek by Nora, Hazel, and Violet:

I like how this focused just on the daughters’ experience in the story—that went a long way to winnowing down the story to a manageable size. And it was a good idea to give each sister her own introduction right at the top, to make all the characters clear. The subtitles help kept the plot understandable. I liked the running joke about how small the house is, with a cool use of that little door in the side of the house! And the three sisters’ freaking-out “Home Alone” hands-on-the-face reaction to the tininess of the house was fantastic. When grasshopper storm comes, I love how hard the girls sold it, with insane panic and crying, and the camerawork felt appropriately frenetic. It’s the enthusiastic acting that put this one over the top! (And great prairie dresses too!) We’ll be showing this one on Sunday too!

By the way, Violet in this movie went to preschool with my daughter Lucy Momo! Here’s a picture from a few years ago, of them outside the school, when we all spelled out their names with dandelions:

Looking forward to the screening this Sunday!

The 90-Second Newbery relies on your donations to keep going. Make your tax-deductible donation here! We are under the fiscal sponsorship of the Northwestern Settlement nonprofit.

Last week we did the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival in San Antonio, Texas! This was one of the best screenings we’ve had yet, sponsored in grand style by BiblioTech, San Antonio’s digital library, and H-E-B Read 3, HEB Texas Grocery’s literacy program. Thanks to the kids for the fantastic movies they made—and the audience who came out in full force, packing the Tobin Center for Performing Arts with 300+ people!

And special thanks to my co-host, author Nikki Loftin (The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, Wish Girl and Nightingale’s Nest), who knocked it out of the park as a co-host. She sang! She danced! She cracked wise! (And she saved the show when I almost skipped a movie and she gracefully got me back on track.)

Here Nikki and I introduce the show and perform the opening song, which I cribbed from the 2014 90-Second Newbery screenings . . . it’s “What Would John Newbery Do?” (apologies to South Park’s “What Would Brian Boitano Do?”) in which we reveal the superheroic, terrifying exploits of the man for whom the Newbery Medal is named:

Special thanks to Laura Cole of BiblioTech and Christa Aldrich of HEB, who did all the hard work of bringing the 90-Second Newbery to town: landing a venue, spreading the word, making the screening into a red-carpet gala event with snacks and paparazzi, all kinds of logistics—Laura and Christa worked overtime to build the 90-Second Newbery up in San Antonio, and they did an amazing job.

Usually at these 90-Second Newbery screenings, I show a mix of movies: local entries side-by-side with ringers from around the country. But we had so many entries from Texas this year, we had enough to make the entire screening 100% Texas-made! We also decided to award prizes for the best videos. The first prize went to the Texas Underdogs’ impressive adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. The second prize went to Ryan and Rudy’s stop-motion Lego adaptation of Louis Sachar’s 1999 Holes. Third place went to this adaptation of Margi Preus’ 2011 Honor Book Heart of a Samurai, as adapted by Camryn L. and Eugene V.:

Good visual storytelling all the way through, with great use of sound effects and music (especially for the “‘MURICA!” part). I like the way this movie shows the boat and the whale in the pool, and intercut that with the three boys in the actual boat (resourceful, getting that!) Spraying the crew of the boat with a hose seemed fun—also jumping into the pool too! It tells the story effectively with nothing but images and subtitles. I like that “The Fault in Our Stars” existed back in the 1800s . . . and that when Manjiro finally becomes a samurai, he is fighting the . . . uh, evil trees? Thanks, Camryn and Eugene!

And thanks to everyone who came out for the film festival in San Antonio! Here are a few more pictures to give you an idea of what it was like:

And now, the final montage of all the movies we showed in the San Antonio 2015 screening. Enjoy! And it’s never too early to get cracking on movies for next year!

Now, on to Chicago! And San Francisco, Oakland, New York, Portland, Tacoma, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Rochester NY . . .

This year’s fifth annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is kicking off with a special early screening in San Antonio, TX on January 9, 2016! It’s hosted by me and Texas young-adult author Nikki Loftin (The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, Wish Girl, and Nightingale’s Nest) and sponsored by Bibliotech and H-E-B Texas Grocery. This free event is “sold out,” but in my experience, only 80% of the reservations ever get used, so go ahead and put yourself on the wait list here. Or if you’re feeling lucky, just show up!

With just two days until the San Antonio 90-Second Newbery, let’s check out three great animated entries we received this year!

At the top of the post, check out the stop-motion Lego animation of Louis Sachar’s 1999 Medal Winner Holes. Such meticulous attention to detail! I love how the various background “sets” zipped on and off the “stage” set up here, almost as though we were watching a play. The voice for the intertitles of “six hours later” and “a few moments later” was strangely funny. This adaptation ruthlessly cuts out everything that wouldn’t fit in the allotted time, and yet still gets the basic story across in a way I could understand. I like how the movie sometimes used clay to represent water or dirt—resourceful! A pleasure to watch!

Another pleasure to watch: this Clutch Cargo-style animated-lips version of William Steig’s 1983 Honor Book Doctor DeSoto, by Deyanira, Jessalyn, Alex, and Katlyn of Margil Elementary School:



The idea to do it as a series of voiceovers on top of clip art of mice and a cat was fun, and it was especially good because of the lips-moving effect (reportedly achieved with an app called Chatterpix). I noticed that this adaptation switched the villain from a fox (in the book) to a cat—perhaps because that cat picture is so fierce? The script was tight and the story whipped along at an admirable pace. Great job!

Finally we have Arnold Lobel’s 1973 Honor Book Frog and Toad Together as adapted by Alvardo Garcia:



More of a puppet show than an animation, but let’s stick it in this post anyway! Love the skillfully-drawn puppets and the brisk efficient storytelling. The background music was well-chosen and the voice acting worked quite well too. I like how the “seeds” moved from Frog to Toad when Frog was giving them, good attention to detail! More good details: how Toad is reading to the seeds a book titled “The Little Seeds That Could” and that a little bubble floated in to explain what he was doing. I also liked the resourceful way this movie represented the dangers for Frog and Toad to be “brave” over: an “avalanche” of clumps of paper, a sock-snake, and the ingenious hand-silhouette of the bird!

Looking forward to seeing everyone in San Antonio on Saturday!

This year’s fifth annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is kicking off with a special early screening in San Antonio, TX on January 9, 2016! It’s hosted by me and Texas young-adult author Nikki Loftin (The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, Wish Girl, and Nightingale’s Nest) and sponsored by Bibliotech and H-E-B Texas Grocery. This free event is “sold out,” but in my experience, only 80% of the reservations ever get used, so go ahead and put yourself on the wait list here. Or if you’re feeling lucky, just show up!

So yesterday, in our countdown to the San Antonio screening, I featured eleven 90-Second Newbery movies from Texas that were adapted from the most commonly chosen book for 90-Second Newberys—The Giver. You might wonder what the second most commonly adapted book is. (You’re probably not but I’m going to tell you anyway.) It’s a close race between Louis Sachar’s 1999 Medal Winner Holes and Katherine Paterson’s 1978 Medal Winner Bridge to Terabithia. Let’s look at the Terabithias that came from Texas this year!

First up is by Dominguez Garcia Serrano of Tale of the Dragon Productions:



Crisp cinematography, great editing, wonderful use of the song—at times it felt like a music video! I love how the story is told without a single spoken word, just adept visual storytelling! Good use of slow-motion during the race, and also when Jesse is throwing away the note. I also like how this updates the story with iPhones and showing a TV news report. Brisk, efficient, stylish! Well done!

Our second Terabithia is by L. Lopez, J. Ortega, and S. Mathis of Southwest High School:



A little long, but that’s all right! From the very beginning I felt in good hands with the adroit cinematography and editing: the tight shot of Jesse panting, the handshake, the closeups of nature. Good background music throughout. I like the way Jesse is skeptical of Leslie at first, and then gradually won over. Good Christmas scene with the “Peanuts” Christmas music, and even an actual Christmas tree! (For some reason I also liked how the “prince” dog was basically uncontrollable.) There is a strange tension in the scene in the dark—I like how her phone conversation is interspersed with pictures from the gallery itself—that’s efficient storytelling. “And all of a sudden I’m full of inexplicable sadness” was a good line. Nice grace note at the end with that tight shot of Jesse putting the crown on his sister’s head at the end!

The next one is by Brianna West of Louis D. Brandeis High School:



I knew I was in good hands from the start, with its title sequence’s somber piano music and slow pan over the waters. Well-shot throughout, with good use of locations and music! And I like how Leslie’s death is tastefully implied, by cutting to Jesse throwing rocks into the water and crying. This movie does a lot with pure visual storytelling, not so many words needed.

The next Terabithia is by Mariah and Bostin of Southwest High School:



I liked how it seemed to be a “found-footage” movie like The Blair Witch Project. Good cameo by the salamander. The amusingly perfunctory way Leslie’s death is handled is perfectly in the spirit of a 90-Second Newbery!

And finally, Avan Peltier of Tale of the Dragon Production checks in with this last Bridge to Terabithia:



I liked the feeling of going through a portal to get to Terabithia at the beginning. The way the movie chose to portray “The Giants” was hilariously ridiculous. When Jess learns that “the queen has died,” that was some great restrained acting on his part, some well-done grief! I only wish it had been longer . . . Not counting the title, credits, and blooper, the actual story part of the video is only about 45 seconds! I want more!

Thanks for these movies. See you tomorrow on this blog for Part 4 of the San Antonio countdown . . . and see you Saturday in San Antonio at the sold-out show!

This year’s fifth annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is kicking off with a special early screening in San Antonio, TX on January 9, 2016! It’s hosted by me and Texas young-adult author Nikki Loftin (The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, Wish Girl, and Nightingale’s Nest) and sponsored by Bibliotech and H-E-B Texas Grocery. This free event is “sold out,” but in my experience, only 80% of the reservations ever get used, so go ahead and put yourself on the wait list here. Or if you’re feeling lucky, just show up!

So, every year, by an overwhelming margin, I get more 90-Second Newberys based on Lois Lowry’s 1994 Medal Winner The Giver than any other book. I get why: it’s often taught in classrooms, so most kids have already read it; it’s short; it’s a dystopia. So today, in our countdown to the San Antonio screening, let’s feature at all the versions of The Giver that I’ve received from Texas this year.

(By the way, there’s a harrowing scene in the book in which the hero’s father kills a baby. For some reason, kids making 90-Second Newbery videos love this scene, spending upwards of 10 seconds of their allotted 90 seconds depicting it, frequently with a kind of harrowing glee. A few years ago I put together a highlights clip of all the infanticide scenes from all the 90-second versions of The Giver I received; it’s at the top of the post.)

I’m happy to say that most of these Texas adaptations of The Giver tastefully avoid or minimize that scene! Our first Texas Giver is from Chetzaly, Michelle, Luis, and Amy:



What a great idea to do it in the style of a music video for “Don’t Stop Believing”! The lyrics were ingenious. I like the switch from black and white to color when Jonas learns about color, and Jonas’ funny look of incredulity. Good committed acting and well shot!

The one is by Brianna, Matthew, Jailene, Austin, Josue, and Adryn:



Very efficiently told! I like how it’s not only whiteboard drawings but also stuff taped up onto the whiteboard. I also liked how they represented the “elsewhere” world with colored houses to contrast the black and white world. Well-chosen background music too!

The next one is by Mrs. Garcia’s class at Abraham Kazen Middle School:



I liked their twist of taking a girl from our world and zapping her into watching the events of the story so she can comment on them. Great staging of all the scenes, especially the Jonas-getting-his-job scene (his look of confusion when he’s passed over was great; and the chanting of “Jonas, Jonas!” was pretty creepy!). Good editing throughout too, especially in the family discussion scene. Oh and the beards! I loved the father’s little paper beard and the Giver’s huge luxurious white beard. Jonas got off some good lines throughout, “This job is easy!” and “Good idea, but I must take my fake brother first.” And there’s something kind of hilarious about, during the “war” memory, the soldier kid smiling with glee even while he’s getting shot to death—followed by “you thought that was bad?” The switching from black and white to color was a good way to indicate the difference between the worlds.

The next one is by Amalie and Madeleine:



What a deeply satisfying musical version! The songs were all really well-written and sung, so much fun to listen to (especially that way the singer’s voice goes up with “little Gabe-re-ELLLLLL!”). I liked how each song had its own distinct emotion and rhythm, and how the lyrics were really tightly written.

The next one is by Emily, Skip, Jonathan, and Simone:



What a funny, inventive, refreshingly light-on-its-feet adaptation this is! From the very beginning I was on board, with the hyper-dramatic movie-trailer voice intoning “in a world . . . ” I like how the adult giving out the jobs intoned “you are now carrot and you are now celery” with the same committed maniacal energy as she gave out jobs—the way she delivered the line “it’s gonna be a great honor, it’s gonna hurt a lot” was priceless. That was very resourceful how they made the Giver’s “beard” out of long hair, cleverly pulled under the chin (and I also liked her delivery of the lines “I am the Sharer… I mean, I’m the Giver” and “I will transmit a memory of when the world was awesome”). It’s a satisfyingly shocking moment when Jonas’ perception changes from black and white to color, and we see how wildly red that crazy wig is. Also, Jonas’ reaction to the baby being released was suitably over the top. I liked the ridiculous chase scene where the “plane” comes zooming back and forth (nice wings!) and how Jonas eludes it. And that music at the end is . . . the theme from the Smurfs!? That’s a twist ending, right there!

The next four are from Creekwood Middle School. This one is by Savannah, Kylie, Kimathi, and Lauren:



I love how they did it as a series of pictures. They really got the thrust of the story across with hardly any words at all . . . quite an achievement! I like how, to cut down on confusion, the filmmakers showed and named the different characters right away. The way they showed the apple turning from black and white to color was masterful. The black and white reality turning into the color memories was well done. I especially liked the bad guys on bikes coming after Jonas . . . and the going-through-the-door zoom-in at the end was great! (It was also cool how we got to see drawings of all you filmmakers at the end too.)

The next one from Creekwood Middle School is by Om, Noah, Marirosa, and Keri Ann:



There are so many funny, original, cool details that they put in here: I loved the attitude of the girl at the beginning (although why is she wearing tape on her forehead/nose?) and the person playing The Giver was pretty funny. I loved the way the Giver “made it rain” with colors. And Jonas’ “sad” face was hilarious. Also hilarious: when Jonas’ parents break into uncomfortable laughter after he asks “Do you love me,” followed by their sudden NO. Falling off the bike and grunting “stupid bike!” was good too, as well as the breaking-the-fourth-wall touch “could you please be quiet?”

Here’s the third entry from Creekwood Middle School, by Zoe, Andrew, Lucy, and Haley:



I loved this musical adaptation! What an ingenious idea to recount the plot in the style of a chanting singalong. They whipped through the plot with awesome efficiency, nailing all the necessary details, and the overall effect is both goofy and deeply creepy! My favorite part: when Jonas rescues Gabe from the his father’s maniacal stabbing, just straight-up snatching the baby out of his hands while he’s running by! I also loved when Jonas was using the chair as a “sled” while people through “snow” at him. Resourceful! The lyrics were tight and the execution was full of energy and fun.

The fourth and final entry from Creekwood Middle School is by Ben, Mason, Adam, Hayden:



Very amusing! I liked how at the beginning Jonas is just sitting in the grass, randomly breaking sticks and giggling weirdly to himself. The guy who gives Jonas the job of receiver of memory has an amusingly avuncular manner (especially the self-satisfied way he looks to the distance as he says, “filled with honor, just like mine!”). And The Giver himself was awkwardly funny, the way he giggled while telling Jonas to lay down so he can put his hands on his back. The slow-motion memory of getting hit was well done. Showing a video of the baby being “released” on the phone, and then whipping the camera up to Jonas, was a cool cinematic move too. Well done all around!

Our penultimate video is by Natalie Jaimes:



I liked the intriguing design choices here—telling the story all through text of various interesting fonts over evocative backgrounds with background music. Good job!

And finally, here’s the last adaptation of The Giver from San Antonio this year, by Facio, Fonseca, Rodriguez, Romero, Brooks and Guerra:



Good cinematography, and good use of stock images and videos. I liked the montage in the middle— it packed an unexpected punch!

Thanks for all these adaptations of The Giver. Some of them will be shown at the screening this Saturday in San Antonio, so do come if you can!

This year’s fifth annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is kicking off with a special early screening in San Antonio, TX on January 9, 2016! It’s hosted by me and Texas young-adult author Nikki Loftin (The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, Wish Girl, and Nightingale’s Nest) and sponsored by Bibliotech and H-E-B Texas Grocery. Admission is free, but seats are going fast, so make your reservation here.

Let’s take a look at some of the great movies that will be featured at the screening! For instance, here are two versions Neil Gaiman’s 2009 Newbery Medal Winner The Graveyard Book. (Actually, that’s inaccurate: as everyone knows, the 2009 Newbery Medal was actually awarded to my novel The Order of Odd-Fish. This schism, which nearly rent the American Library Association apart, was at last resolved when Neil Gaiman and I at last managed a wary détente face-to-face in Chicago).

The first Graveyard Book adaptation was filmed by the formidable “Texas Underdogs” group Daniel, Anahi, A.J., Alex, Isabella, Corina, Cynthia, and “ESV2.” Check it out:

From the very beginning, with that shot of the creepy full moon framed by the dead tree branches, I knew that this movie would be great. I liked the way the sky seemed to shimmer, and the ghostly wind sound was suitably scary. I also liked how Bod was framed so small in the opening shot, with a cool-looking grave marker in the foreground. And when the special effects started to kick in, with the subtly-colored ghosts floating over the black-and-white world, I was really impressed! The wonders pile up: Mr. and Mrs. Owens are played with appropriate domestic fussiness, Silas is just as mysterious and impressive as in the book, and when the Lady on the Grey shows up—on an actual ghost-horse!—I was blown away. I loved the amazing three-headed Sleer, complete with in-color treasures, and when Silas turns into a bat! (And I love the joke of Mrs. Lupescu’s disgusting food being shot in color.) And when Jack shows up again with his knife, the chase scene is really well done, all the way to the Sleer devouring him! When Bod tries to embrace Mrs. Owens, and she disappears, it was unexpectedly heartbreaking.

But that’s not the only great Graveyard Book we got from San Antonio! Here’s another, by Lance Mickael:

Chaotic madness but actually kind of scary! I love the frenetic way the “killing” scene at the beginning is edited, with great music. It kind of reminds me of the rapid cutting in the shower scene in the movie Psycho! Good job using an ACTUAL baby and an ACTUAL graveyard for this movie, and good ghost costumes and bloody-knife prop–this movie really goes the distance for authenticity! I liked the spooky way it’s lit, with lots of silhouettes and weird angles. When the scary music returns, it’s kind of legitimately terrifying! I particularly liked it when Jack picked up the bloody knife in the closet, and then moments later is devoured by the Sleer. Great job!

See you in San Antonio this Saturday, and look for another post of standout entries tomorrow!

Even though the deadline is January 10, the entries are already really starting to roll in for 2016’s FIFTH ANNUAL 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! Today I’d like to highlight two recent standout entries that happen to be animated.

The movie above is an adaptation of Virginia Hamilton’s 1989 Newbery Honor Book In The Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World. It’s by an old friend of the film festival, a certain Ignis Draco, a.k.a. Tristan Stephan from Minnesota who back in 2011 had submitted a a great animated 90-Second Newbery of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. I met him in person when the film festival came to Minnesota last year, and found him as delightful in person as he has been by electronic correspondence. That’s probably my favorite thing about running this film festival—the chance to meet awesome creative people all over the country.

As for the movie: it’s hilarious and ingenious! All the puppets are beautifully drawn and intricately articulated. There’s great attention to detail, like the hilarious way Odin kicks Ymir’s head straight off, the cheeky repetition of “Yeah, that’s what could have happened, but what about this other story?”, the use of music from the notoriously multiple-ending movie “Clue,” and the way the Egyptian episode is unveiled with papyrus unscrolling, how Ymir reappears at the end . . . and the Big Bang at the end-of-the-end! I also appreciate that it’s an adaptation of one of the more obscure Newbery honorees. Amazing job, Tristan!

The other animated 90-Second Newbery I’d like to share today is of the vignette “The Garden” from Arnold Lobel’s 1973 Honor Book Frog and Toad Together, as adapted by Devin Grover from Canandaigua, New York.

Devin (who is also an actor!) made this at the Animatus Studio in Rochester, New York. And his stop-motion claymation work here is outstanding! Not only is it a tight script with great acting, I love the antsy style he used: so many little motions, blinking and fidgeting and gesturing! (I especially liked the believable, totally-in-character way Toad was tapping his foot and then jumping up and down when he was impatient for the plants to grow.) Such attention to detail, especially the lushly-drawn backdrops. Good choices for the background music and the twitter of the birds. And of course the vocal performances of both Frog and Toad were a delight!

How is YOUR 90-Second Newbery coming along? The deadline is January 10!

It’s never too early to start submitting your videos for the FIFTH ANNUAL 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! The final deadline is January 10, 2016 but we’ve already received many top-notch entries.

For instance, check out the above from the Schaumburg Township District Library in suburban Chicago. Every year I hang out with the teens at the Schaumburg Library to help them make their 90-Second Newbery, because they’re a great group to work with. And this year, they chose to adapt Beverly Cleary’s 1978 Honor Book Ramona and Her Father.

Schaumburg always puts a crazy twist on the material. Two years ago it was The Whipping Boy done in the style of Star Wars, complete with light sabers and space battles. Last year it was Charlotte’s Web done in the style of a horror movie that was actually kind of legitimately scary!

This year they audaciously decided to adapt Ramona and Her Father in the style of PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING—complete with bombastic smack talk, crazy staged violence, and over-the-top attitude. This video answers the question: what if the Quimby family’s problems strained them to the point where everyday life turns into a neverending raucous brawl? Complete with flamethrowers, exploding pumpkins, and bonus points for Picky-Picky, the Quimby’s terrifying cat! Admittedly a bit longer than 90 seconds, but I promise you, you’ve never seen Ramona and Her Father like this!

Our next movie today is by Max K., one of my students back in 2013 when I taught a “90-Second Newbery” class at Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development. You can see the movies from that summer here; among other roles, Max shines as the French mouse taunting Elmer/King Arthur in the Monty-Python-flavored adaptation of My Father’s Dragon.

Here Max tackles Lois Lowry’s 1994 Medal winner The Giver, giving it a great mixed-media, stop-motion collage montage:

One of the most fascinatingly abstract 90-Second Newberys I’ve ever received! The animated stones and chess pieces were inspired. I liked how Max represented the dialogue with text onscreen. The crazy barrage of images ending with a nuclear blast was awesome and overwhelming. I like how the only two places that had sound were the nuclear explosion and the song at the end! I also appreciated all the careful little touches, like how the “a” letters in the name turned red at in the title. The story is told with rapid efficiency, with good use of intertitles and onscreen dialogue! The chase scene at the end was epic. And I loved the “diverse” place Jonas finds at the end!

Next up is Katherine Applegate’s 2013 Medal winner The One and Only Ivan, written, directed, and edited by 10-12-year-olds Stephanie C., Maria M., Youssef Z., and Sarah Z., at a community television station in North Andover, MA, with their coordinator Tiffany Begin-Stearns (who takes on the role of “Stella” here; “a challenge,” she wrote, “since my construction paper ears and trunk kept falling off”):

The “elephant” costumes were adorable—really, all the costumes were great!—and the green screen work was resourceful. I also liked the way the bear was manipulated puppet-style, very clever! The hash marks counting off the days in the zoo behind him was an inspired touch too. I liked the way the elephant ears comically flopped forward right before Stella’s death, and the record-scratch before she gave her final wish. The narrator was really expressive—indeed, all the acting felt committed and enthusiastic! Good musical and sound effects cues throughout, too. That always helps a lot. I particularly liked how the movie went to black and white for the memory-in-the-jungle anecdote (and I was amused at how the truck was helpfully labeled “TRUCK”). Good fast-forward for when Ivan is producing the art. I liked how it kept switching up the variety of shots for visual interest in almost every scene. All in all: a fantastic job! Thanks, North Andover!

But wait, that’s not the only movie we got from Andover this year! Here is Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s 1968 Honor book The Egypt Game, as adapted by Friends Central School:

I appreciated the believable and amusing acting throughout (especially when the kid was yelling for his squid Security!), and the resourceful use of green screen mixed with real sets. Good use of montage in the clean-up scene! And the switch to black and white and the big black sheet coming on worked really well. Great summary of the story. I love this book, and I loved this adaptation!

This last one is from my neck of the woods, in good old Chicago. It’s by the kids at the Latin School’s after school club, facilitated by Ms. Gall and Mr. Sutton, and it’s their take on 2015 Honor book El Deafo (which happens to be the ABSOLUTE FAVORITE BOOK of my 6-year-old and 4-year-old daughters):

I loved how they replicated design elements of the graphic novel, such as having everyone wear the bunny ears and including word balloons. All throughout El Deafo, the heroine is trying to decide who she prefers as a best friends, and so this movie smartly repackages the story as a kind of political campaign by the various friends, vaunting their qualifications for the job. Many creative and enjoyable choices in the cinematography and how the story was presented, like when the kids pop out from behind Cece yelling “Me!” or how the movie slowed down for the “Nooooo!” The barfing scene was resourcefully done, too—I always love me a good barfing scene! I like how this group took the time to choose the right music for each part and also choose the appropriate costumes. The script was tight and told the story efficiently and amusingly, and with a great twist! And the way Cece was “flying” at the end was hilarious!

Thanks, everyone, for these early entries to the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! I’m looking forward to a great year of movies!