The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival relies on your donations! Want to support what we’re doing? Please donate the 90-Second Newbery here! We are a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.

This past weekend Keir Graff (author of The Matchstick Castle) and I co-hosted back-to-back screenings of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival at the New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library. We had great crowds at both venues! This year we got much more participation than usual from the New York area. Above is a collage of screenshots of some of the movies we received from New York this year.

A video of the opening musical skit exists, but unfortunately the sound quality wasn’t as crisp as it was for the Minneapolis screening. If you want to see a good version of the opening skit, check out the Minneapolis version here, starring me, Keir, and this year’s Newbery Medal winner Kelly Barnhill.

The opening skit was all about how odd it is that so many animals die in Newbery-winning books. As the skit goes on, Keir and I come upon a “Newbery-matic 7000” contraption that produces Newbery-winning manuscripts, but at a price: a live animal must be sacrificed! And so we end up murdering the pet of a child in the audience. In Minneapolis, that child was played by a girl named Hadley; in New York, the part was played by one of our filmmakers, Violet.

Violet did a fantastic job, and on super-short notice! This isn’t Violet’s first year involved with the 90-Second Newbery, either. Last year, Violet and her partner-in-crime Ocean adapted Carl Hiaasen’s 2003 Honor Book Hoot with stop-motion Legos; this year, they made an adaptation of Tomie dePaola’s 2000 Honor Book 26 Fairmount Avenue, entirely with stop-motion Playmobil figures:

The 90-Second Newbery website said of this video, “an accomplished and impressive feat of stop-motion animation . . . So much detail and love went into this! It’s fantastic!”

It was great fun to show off movies from other 90-Second Newbery veterans too, like Jillian and Joseph Parrino. Check out Jillian’s submission this year, an adaptation of Victoria Jamieson’s Roller Girl in the style of Hamilton:

As the judges said at the 90-Second Newbery website, “Flat-brilliant . . . the songs were cleverly shortened and edited to make a smooth flow. It’s a smart concept that fits with unexpected serendipity with the source material.”

Jillian’s brother Joseph made a first-rate video too, of Marion Dane Bauer’s 1987 Honor Book On My Honor . . . with a cast entirely of fruit! You can check it out here, along with the judges’ praise! Both movies killed at the screening!

Here are Keir and I with Jillian and Joseph after the show. I look forward to getting their movies every year!

I can’t include every movie that we featured on Saturday and Sunday in this post, or the post would go on forever. But I did want to draw attention to this strange and original adaptation of Katherine Applegate’s 2013 Medal Winner The One and Only Ivan by Milo and Levi of the Carroll Gardens branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. It’s done entirely with sampled clips from all over the Internet:

A new way to do 90-Second Newberys! The judges said this one is “original, goofy, and entertaining… original and extremely enjoyable!”

There are a lot more great entries where those came from! Click on these below to see other local entries featured at the screenings at the New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library:

The War That Saved My Life by Brooklyn Friends School
Frog and Toad Together by Jada and Tatayana of the Brooklyn Public Library
Last Stop on Market Street by the Clarendon branch of the Brooklyn Public Library
Last Stop on Market Street by the Cortelyou branch of the Brooklyn Public Library
Charlotte’s Web by the Bedford Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library
When You Reach Me by Kenzie and Hannah of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
El Deafo by Emi and Mamie of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
Courage of Sarah Noble by Celia and Sarah, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by the Gravesend branch of the Brooklyn Public Library
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Mohana of New York, NY (not available online yet)

After the show, we invited just the filmmakers onstage. Here are Keir and I with some of the young filmmakers who came to the New York Public Library screening:

And here we are with some of the moviemakers who made it to the Brooklyn screening:

It takes a lot of people working together to put on these shows. At the New York Public Library, thanks to to Tali Stolzenberg-Myers, Aisha Ahmad-Post, Caitlyn Colman-McGaw, Emily Nichols, and Emily Krell… as well as the folks at the Andreas Dracopolous Endowment for Young Audiences. Thanks also to Paquita Campoverde, Brandon Graham, and everyone at the Brooklyn Public Library who helped out. Thanks to the Crosswicks Foundation and Penguin Young Readers. Thanks to my co-host Keir Graff, and of course thanks to all the young filmmakers and the teachers, family, and facilitators who help them make these great movies!

To wrap up, here’s the closing montage we played at the New York Public Library:

And the closing montage at the Brooklyn Public Library:

See you next year, New York!

The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival relies on your donations! Want to support what we’re doing? Please donate the 90-Second Newbery here! We are a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.

The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival relies on your donations! Want to support what we’re doing? Please donate the 90-Second Newbery here! We are a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.

The 6th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is in full swing, rolling across this great and glorious land of ours!

So far we’ve done shows in San Antonio, Tacoma, Portland, Oakland, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. (Phew!) I haven’t blogged about them yet because I haven’t had time, but I wanted to blog about Minneapolis as soon as possible because of our special co-host.

(Hey! If you can, come to our upcoming screenings in New York City, Brooklyn, Rochester NY, Chicago, Asheville, and/or Boston! I promise a great show and it’s free! In this economy, can you beat that? Full schedule here.)

Usually I have only one co-host. But this year I’m doing most of my screenings with TWO co-hosts. The first is always Keir Graff, author of the brand-new, rollicking, adventurous, funny children’s novel The Matchstick Castle. The second co-host changes from town to town, usually a local children’s author.

Who was my local co-host in Minneapolis? None other than the one and only Kelly Barnhill, who JUST HAPPENED TO WIN THE 2017 NEWBERY MEDAL for her magical, inventive, poetic The Girl Who Drank the Moon! I’m so happy for Kelly—I’m a fan of her previous books The Witch’s Boy and The Mostly True Story of Jack, and in fact Kelly has co-hosted the Minneapolis 90-Second Newbery twice before (here we are in 2016 and 2015).

Yes, I knew her when!

Kelly has always been a fantastic co-host, with great crowd rapport, and always game for whatever singing-and-dancing goofery the show might call for.

The crowd was ready for it! We completely filled up the Pohlad Auditorium in the Central Library of Minneapolis, with an audience of well over two hundred. By tradition, we always start the show with a singing-and-dancing skit. In this year’s opening skit, Kelly teaches Keir and me the secret to writing Newbery Medal-winning books. A gruesome device is revealed, a volunteer from the audience is roped in, Kate DiCamillo is affectionately denounced, there is some (tasteful!) murder, and then Kelly, Keir and I launch into the opening number from “Hamilton” with a 90-Second Newbery twist. I know what you’re asking: is there a video of these three middle-aged white people incompetently rapping? Of course! Scroll back up, check out the video!

Watched the video? Okay, so the girl from the audience who helped us out is named Hadley. She has attended 90-Second Newbery screenings before, but this was the first time she’s ever been part of the show! Here we are hanging out afterwards:

Thanks, Hadley! You dad a fantastic job, especially on such short notice!

Speaking of folks I just met at the show . . . I had a special surprise: I met a girl named Leonie who is a fan of my novel The Order of Odd-Fish! She was wearing an “Aznath, the Silver Kitten of Deceit” costume (confused? just read the book) and she also gave me this fantastic fan art, below!

For those of you who have read Odd-Fish, Leonie here illustrates the scene of when the cockroach butlers force Jo to wear “The Hat of Honor” and parade her over to the gossip columnist Chatterbox’s apartment:

Beautiful, amazing! I like that it’s an over-the-shoulder POV shot from Chatterbox’s window, cool choice! The Hat of Honor is hilariously elaborate, the joyous cockroaches are both anatomically accurate and yet dressed exactly as foppishly as I imagined, and I love all the spectators peeking in on the situation — including an incognitio Belgian Prankster at the bottom! (And is that the Schwenk flying in the sky in the background?) Masterful, Leonie! Thank you so much. (Intrigued by this glimpse into the world of The Order of Odd-Fish? Learn more about the book here.)

OK, back to the 90-Second Newbery! We received ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE videos from Minnesota this year. An embarrassment of riches! There were so many great ones! We ended up showing twelve movies from Minnesota, plus a few other great movies from around the country. If I featured all twelve in this post, it would be way too long, so I’ll just highlight three of them and link to the rest. They’re all winners!

First up, here’s Cece Bell’s 2015 Newbery Honor book El Deafo, as adapted by Jackie Hjelden’s class at Highlands Elementary in Edina, MN:

I especially liked the way Cece gapes with puppy-love eyes at Mike Miller! You can see the judges’ complete comments on the video here.

Next, here’s a Claymation version of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1963 Medal Winner A Wrinkle in Time by Aubrey and Gia of Ms. Nite’s class at Anwatin’s Middle School:

I love the way the brain melts at the end under the relentless might of “the power of love”! Read the judges’ praise and commentary of the movie here.

Here’s another movie that was a huge hit at the film festival, a Lego stop-motion adaptation of Sharon Creech’s 2001 Honor Book The Wanderer, by Bai Li Johnson of Inver Grove Heights Middle Middle School:

Painstakingly animated, frequently ingenious, sometimes funny, and genuinely touching! Check out the judges’ complete comments here.

Like I said, we featured twelve Minnesota videos, way too many to put in one blog post! But if you’re interested, do check these out too, they all show a lot of hard work, resourcefulness, and wit on the part of the filmmakers:

Another adaptation of El Deafo by Highlands Elementary of Edina, MN, this time by Adna, Emily, Louisa, Reid, and Tyler.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by Max, Owen, and Simon of Creek Valley Elementary of Edina, MN.

Because of Winn-Dixie by Franklin, Harry, Noah, and Elijah of Sanford Middle School of Minneapolis.

A Wrinkle in Time by Cherry, Laura, Avery, Isaac, and Mira of Glacier Hills Elementary School of Eagen, MN.

Holes by Inga, Rose, Annabelle of Countryside Elementary in Edina, MN.

Kira-Kira by Olivia of Edina, MN.

Bridge to Terabithia by Kathleen, Taylor, Reid, and Milo of Creek Valley Elementary of Edina, MN.

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Dylan, Sam, and Eli of Somerset Elementary School of Mendota Heights, MN.

The Westing Game by Emily, Insley, Ellie M., and Ellie S. of St. Paul Academy and Summit School of St. Paul, MN.

Congratulations on being screened . . . and thank you to all these fantastic young moviemakers, and the teachers, family, and others who helped and supported them.

A very special thank you to Jen Verbrugge and Jen Nelson of the Minnesota Department of Education, for sponsoring this program. And thanks to Keir Graff and Kelly Barnhill for being such talented and enthusiastic co-hosts yet again. And thanks to Katherine and Marcus at Addendum Books for making our books available at the screening . . . and for hosting Keir, Kelly, and me at their bookstore the night before the screening!

Here’s a montage of all the movies we showed in Minneapolis. If I didn’t show your movie, it’s not because I didn’t like it, it’s just because we didn’t have time to show all the great stuff we received this year! I’m looking forward to seeing what you make for next year. (Hopefully, there will be a few adaptations of The Girl Who Drank the Moon in the mix… In Claymation? As musicals? In the style of Monty Python? Or in the format of a Seinfeld episode? Who knows? Go crazy!)

The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival relies on your donations! Want to support what we’re doing? Please donate the 90-Second Newbery here! We are a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.

The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is coming to San Antonio this Saturday! It’ll be at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre from 3-5 pm, co-hosted by me and Texas author Nikki Loftin, sponsored by Bexar County’s Digital Library Bibliotech and H-E-B Texas Grocery. Reservations are free, and they’re going fast! Make your reservation here!

Every year with the 90-Second Newbery, one thing always remains the same: I get a lot of adaptations of Lois Lowry’s 1994 Medal winning book The Giver. But that’s just fine, if the adaptations are creative and do interesting things with the text! Yesterday we featured a Claymation version of The Giver from Kingwood, TX; at the top of this post, check out another submission from Kingwood, by Noah, Alyssa, Adam, and Keona of Creekwood Middle School.

As the judges said on the 90-Second Newbery blog, “I love how joyful and fun this adaptation of The Giver feels! The barrage of goofy references to other movies like The Hunger Games, The Terminator, Star Wars, Jaws, etc. was a fun touch. It was clever how you had people just repeating the world ‘rules’ personify the oppressive mass of rules Jonas must live under. The shift from black-and-white to color during the game of catch was well done (along with the final joke about not being able to catch), and when Jonas is enjoying the newly revealed world of color, that look of bliss on his face while colored paper is fluttering around him was aces. I liked the explosion of light special effect you used to denote every time we are entering the world of the Giver’s memory. And nice ‘sled’! I guess when you don’t have snow, you make do with what you have!”

But that’s not the only version of The Giver we’ve received! Here’s one by Spencer, Kim, Rebecca, and Daniel of Green Table Productions in Houston, TX:

As the judges said in the 90-Second Newbery blog, “I liked the combination of live-action and pen drawings you used to tell the story. The narration had a confident tone and told the story very concisely and accurately. The ‘war memory’ scene was bonkers, and the ‘release’ scene was abrupt and hilarious. Good use of the dramatic music and alarm towards the end. And I liked how the baby Gabe is just … a rainbow-colored stuffed triangle? All that said, I think my favorite part might be the sped-up goofball dancing over the credits. Well done!”

This next adaptation is by Catherine, Skye, Austin, and Brigham of Houston, TX:

The judges say, “The beginning is intense and dramatic, hooks the viewer’s interest right away! I like the Katy Perry music throughout, that was a good choice. The voiceover narration worked well. I loved how, when Jonas learns about colors, all the colors are being thrown at him and he flinches in slow-motion. And it’s a nice moment when Jonas’ parents laugh at him when he asks if they love him. As for the ‘release’ scene… pretty gruesome that he kills the baby, puts it in a bag, throws it in the trash can… and then, to add insult to injury, kicks over the trash can! Cold, cold. Also, I liked the Giver’s paper beard! And is that chair being used as a bike at the end? Resourceful! (But don’t you have a bike?)”

Finally, here’s a different take on The Giver by Camille McWhorter of Creekwood Middle School of Kingwood, TX:

The judges said, “This adaptation of The Giver does something radical I’d never seen before in a 90-Second Newbery: it tells the story of what happened before the story in the book! It’s all about Rosemary, the Giver’s daughter and Jonas’ predecessor. Very poetic and well done. It is similar to Jonas’ story in the book, but while in the book Jonas experiences being the Receiver of Memory as a kind of liberation into the world of truth, here Rosemary can’t deal with the truths she learns, and the conclusion is more tragic. I like the contrast that this demonstrates between the pre-Giver Rosemary and the post-Giver Rosemary. The creepy flashlight under the face in the dark room at the end, with the reveal of who she really is, was the perfect conclusion. Great original idea, well executed!”

All of these and more will be shown at the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival screening in San Antonio this Saturday! (I promise they won’t all be The Giver. We have lots of adaptations of other books too!) Again, tickets are free, so get them here!