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The Order of Oddfish

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See you at ALA! Plus: The Foote School’s 90-Second Newberys

June 21, 2011

Yup, those are my two daughters: Lucy and Ingrid! Two years old and one month old. I am so lucky and happy!

Will you be in New Orleans this weekend? I’ll be there this for the American Library Association conference. I’m speaking about “reluctant readers” at the YALSA preconference on Friday with Jay Asher, Sarah Dessen, Carolyn Mackler, Chris Grabenstein, and Julie Halpern. On Saturday I’m signing The Order of Odd-Fish at the Random House booth (#1215) from 11 am-12 pm, and I’ll be at the Random House Children’s Books Cocktail party at the St. Louis Hotel from 6:00-7:30 pm. On Sunday I’ll be at the YA Author Coffee Klatsch from 9-10 am, and that evening I will attend the Newbery award banquet. With any luck, Laurie Halse Anderson won’t threaten to shoot me with a shotgun like she did last year.

I received a lot of 90-Second Newbery entries while I was on hiatus! (If you don’t know what our 90-Second Newbery film festival is, here’s the details.) It will take me a while to post them all, but I want to start with this batch: 7 different delicious movies from the fifth graders at The Foote School in New Haven, CT. They all did a fantastic job! It’s too unwieldy to stick them all in one post, so I made up a page for all 7 videos here. Congratulations to The Foote School for a job very well done!

To give you a taste of what The Foote School is up to, here’s their version of Holes by Louis Sachar. I appreciated the loving attention paid to sound and audio cues. I especially enjoyed the decision to blare hot-jazz music, for some reason, every time the cops talk. This movie also features the quickest recovery from vomiting I’ve ever witnessed. And the perfunctory brevity of its final cut is quite funny!

You can see the all 7 of The Foote School’s 90-Second Newberys here. Thanks so much! Your films were awesome. This is what the 90-Second Newbery is all about!